Nellie Mae Rowe was a Georgia domestic worker who filled her home and yard with handmade art; in under 2 years, more than 800 people signed her visitor book

In 1973, a Black domestic worker in her 70s stood outside her home surrounded by sculptures made from chewing gum, homemade dolls, and crayon artwork stuck to the trees. As drivers slowed down and stepped out of their cars, some even throwing bottles at her windows, she welcomed them all in. In the time between May 1973 and March 1975 alone, over 800 people signed her guest book, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A life spent working for other people

Nellie Mae Rowe was born in Fayette County, Georgia, on July 4, 1900. She was the ninth of ten children born to her father, who worked on a sharecropping farm. Most of her adult life was spent as a domestic worker. While she cooked, cleaned, and cared for other people’s homes, she had little time left over to create any art of her own.


Part of Rowe’s artistic inclinations can be attributed to her parents' influence on her, as they were skilled craftsmen themselves. Her father used to weave baskets and do blacksmithing, whereas her mother had a reputation for making quilts and sewing. As per the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Rowe received schooling for only a few years before quitting school to help out on the family’s farm. However, she still managed to engage in activities such as drawing and making dolls whenever she could escape her farm duties. She got married to Ben Wheat at the age of sixteen, moving to Vinings in 1930. Her first husband's death in 1936 was followed by her marriage to Henry “Buddy” Rowe later that year.

The playhouse that became a phenomenon

According to the High Museum of Art, Nellie Mae Rowe began transforming her home into what she called her ‘Playhouse’ soon after the death of her husband Henry in 1948; though at first the changes stayed small, since she was still working full-time as a domestic worker. It was only in the late 1960s, following the death of her long-term employer, that she finally had the time to pursue her art in earnest. She was in her late 60s when she began creating the large body of work that would become her life’s work.

However, following a newspaper article in 1973, she began receiving visitors in droves. A 2024 Georgia Historical Society publication states that she kept guest books so she could keep track of her visitors. Though she did create a lot of buzz during her lifetime, she was often viewed with suspicion by her neighbors. Some of them assumed she practised voodoo, and they vandalized her yard and property. Many people were also not happy with her having her own creative freedom. But she remained polite nonetheless, and warmly invited her haters in.

The turning point

In 1971, collector and future gallerist Judith Alexander discovered Rowe’s work. Alexander began representing her and opened one of the first folk art galleries in Atlanta. In 1976, Rowe officially made her public debut in the Bicentennial exhibition “Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art, 1770-1976.”

She passed away from cancer in 1982, and her Playhouse was soon demolished. Her work can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2021, the High Museum held an exhibition titled “Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe,” the most extensive exhibition of her work in 20 years.

Why should this matter

Rowe’s story does not fit the typical ‘outsider artist’ narrative that museums often tell. She wasn’t trying to escape her circumstances, she created using whatever she had on hand, for its own sake, long before any institution took notice. The recognition that followed, from the Smithsonian to the Met to the High Museum’s 2021 retrospective, came only after she had already built her life’s work entirely on her own terms.