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BESSIE HARVEY (born October 11, 1929 in , Georgia; died August 12, 1994 in Alcoa, Tennessee)

Born in Dallas, Georgia in 1929, Bessie Harvey's childhood was one of poverty and hardship. She grew up during the Great Depression, the seventh of thirteen children. She is oft quoted as saying "The story of my life would make Roots and The Color Purple look like a fairy tale.There was nothing. In the morning, you'd just get up, go looking for whatever you could find, and if you had one meal that day, then you'd made progress." Bessie attended school through the fourth grade, then went to work as a domestic. She married Charles Harvey at the age of fourteen, so she was no longer a economic burden to her family. Bessie stayed married to Harvey into her early twenties.They separated and she independently moved away, eventually settling in Alcoa,Tennessee with their five children.There she continued to work as a domestic and later married Cleve Jackson. Over the course of a twenty year marriage which ended in divorce, the couple had six children.

Always deeply religious and attuned to the essential spiritual nature of the world, Bessie sought expression for her experiences and beliefs. She recalled creating toys and dolls,"something out of nothing", as a child. As an adult, she would do the same to bring her visionary experiences into the physical world. She began constructing sculptural assemblages from natural materials such as tree branches and roots, that she embellished with beads, paint and even clothing to "bring out" the spirit contained within the raw materials. Following the death of her mother in 1974, she soon went to work on the housekeeping staff at Blount County Memorial Hospital. It was there, in 1977, that she first showed some of her creations in the hospital's annual art show. Her work met with a very positive response and she was encouraged to continue. Bessie Harvey would increasingly devote herself to her art for the next 17 years until her death in 1994.

Bessie Harvey's work is as deep and complex as the worlds that she experienced and explored. Her art encompasses the personal and the profound. She worked at the direction of God through visionary experiences which allowed her to see the natural world in extraordinary ways. She was also deeply rooted to her own cultural heritage as an African American.Writing about this aspect of Harvey's art, scholar and curator Lynne Adele adds, 'Harvey’s work belongs to a widespread African American visionary tradition that has been described as a unique “collaboration between the artist, God, and nature.”The ability to see anthropomorphic forms in roots, limbs, and driftwood—materials held sacred by African artists for their great spiritual powers—is not uncommon among African American visionary artists, and points to the survival of cultural Africanisms on this side of the Atlantic. Harvey is one of many African American artists who echo the belief that their role is to give physical form to spiritual presences already inherent within the materials.The artist’s role is to “bring out” these presences, usually by adding elements that might include shells, hair, cloth, paint, and other found or improvised items.The resulting forms are raw, powerful, and charged with energy.’

- Intuitive eye

Solo Exhibitions:

1997 Awakening the Spirits: Bessie Harvey, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN

1995 Sculpture by Bessie Harvey, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

Going Home: Sculpture by Bessie Harvey, Jazzberry General, Maryville, TN

1993 Bessie Harvey, Community College of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

Bessie Harvey: Sculpture, curated by Troy Smith Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, TN

1991 New Work by Bessie Harvey, curated by John Cramm, Blue Spiral One Gallery, Asheville, NC

1989 Spirit Visions, Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University Museum, Johnson City, TN

BESSIE HARVEY 1987 Bessie Harvey - Recent Work, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

Group Exhibitions:

2019 Souls Grown Deep: Artists of the African American South, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

2018 Yard Show, curated by Marcus Jahmal, Shrine Gallery, New York, NY Revelations: Art from the African American South, De Young Museum, San Francisco, California Original Makers: Folk Art from the Cargo Collection, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL Expressions Unbound: American Outsider Art from the Andrew and Linda Safran Collection, Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA Annex, Shrine Gallery, New York, NY Crafting Abstraction, Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC

2017 Rebel Clay, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Outsider Art Fair NY, represented by Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

2016 Woman Made, Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC A Cut Above: Wood Sculpture from the Gordon W. Bailey Collection, High Museum of Art, , GA Winter Spotlight: Visionary Edge, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Peachtree Industrial, Bodega, New York, NY It Can Howl, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA Glossolalia, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX

2015 Vodun, Vodou, Conjure: Animistic Arts of the African Diaspora, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

2014 When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South, The , New York, NY: Traveled to NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL A Creative Legacy: African American Arts in Tennessee, Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, TN

2012 HomeGround: Art from the Pan-African Diaspora, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

2011 No Ordinary Fold: Southern Self-Taught Artists, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA Outsider Art Fair, represented by Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

2009 Approaching Abstraction, , New York, NY Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE On a Mission: KMA Collectors Circle Acquisitions, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN Plant Body Animal Body, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

2004 Preview of Upcoming Exhibitions (introducing the work of Pushpa Kumari) Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Sisthus; Four African American Self-taught Artists, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outside Art, , IL

2003 Insights: Self-Taught Artists for the 21st Century, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

2002 Between the Nameless and the Named: The Art of Vernacular Homeground, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

2001 Keeping the Faith: Works by Self-Taught Artists, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Transcendentally Material, Mystically Objective, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

1999 By Any Means Necessary: Sculpture by Self-Taught African-American Artists, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

BESSIE HARVEY 1998 Sixth International Outsider Art Fair, represented by Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Millennial Intentions: Post 20th Century Self-Taught Artists, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

1997 Group Show, Gallery 53, Cooperstown, NY Summer Group Show, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Fifth International Outsider Art Fair, New York, NY Redemption Songs: The Self-Taught Artists of Jamaica, Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC

1996 Difficult Women: Bessie Harvey, Chelo Amezcua, Dorthella Branch, Evadney Cruickshank, Elijah, Minnie Evans, Mary Whitfield, Anna Zemánková, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Vision & Voice: Folk Art by Women of the 20th Century, co-sponsored by the Museum of American Folk Art, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ . . . my magic pours secret libations, Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL Pictured in My Mind: Contemporary American Self-Taught Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL Labor of Love, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY Fourth International Outsider Art Fair, represented by Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

1995 The Tree of Life: The Inaugural Exhibition of the American Visionary Art Museum, American Visionary Art Museum, , Maryland Sniper’s Nest: Art That Has Lived with Lucy R. Lippard, Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Important works by Self-Taught Artists, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Third International Outsider Art Fair, represented by Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Masterworks by Self Taught Artists, organized by John Ollman, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY, in collaboration with Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Outsider/Contemporary Folk Art, curated by Marcia Weber, Gallery L’Art 54, New York, NY Everette James Collection, National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN

1994 Grouped Show, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Visionary Women, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Amulets, Dreams and the Voices of Gods: Works by Self-Taught Artists, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Bessie Harvey, Willie Massey, Henry Speller, Inez Nathaniel Walker, Gasperi Gallery, , LA African-American Experience: Five Artists from the South, Blue Spiral 1, Asheville, NC

1993 Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; traveled to Berkeley, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Raleigh Animal Body, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Common Ground/Uncommon Vision: The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art, Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI ÀSHE: Improvisation & Recycling in African-American Visionary Art, Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, NC Not By Luck: Self-Taught Artists in the American South, Lynne Ingram Southern Folk Art, Milford, New Jersey Black History and Artistry: Work by Self-Taught Painters and Sculptors From the Blanchard-Hill Collections, curated by Sandra Kraskin, Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York, NY

1992 Dream Singers, Story Tellers: An African-American Presence, opened at the Fukui Fine Arts Museum, Fukui, Japan, and closed at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ Other Drums, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Contemporary American Folk Art, The Balsley Collection, Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI Diving in the Spirit, curated by Robert Knott, Fine Arts Gallery, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC; traveled to Ewing Gallery, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Folk Art Up Close, curated by Jim Hedges, Metro Arts Commission Downtown Gallery, Nashville, TN African Images in American Craft, curated by Andrew Glasgow, Folk Art Center, Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, Asheville, NC

BESSIE HARVEY 1991 Redemption Songs II, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Syncretism, Alternative Museum, New York, NY Art’s Mouth, funded by Rothko grant, Artist Space, New York, NY Bessie Harvey and Lonnie Holley, curated by Richard Gasperi, Gasperi Gallery, New Orleans, LA A Southern Folk Art Collection, curated by James H. Sanders III, Sawtooth Center for Visual Art, Winston- Salem, NC Folk and Visionary Art, curated by Tina Bucuvala, Arts Festival of Atlanta, The Pavilion Exhibit, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA The Dr. A Everette James, Jr., Collection of African-American Folk Art, curated by Liane Egan, Carl Van Vechten Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts, Fisk University, Nashville, TN Syncretism, Alternative Museum, New York, NY

1990 Bessie Harvey and Sammie Nicely, curated by Martha Alfonso, Ralston Fine Art, Johnson City, TN l989 Black Art - Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; traveled to Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, Morristown, TN The Good and Evil Show, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Bessie Harvey, Sammie Nicely, Bennett Galleries, Knoxville, TN Democracy, Dia Art Foundation, New York, NY From Africa to Appalachia, Rose Center Gallery, Morristown, TN Spirit in the Wood: Bessie Harvey Sculptures/Spirit in the Paint: Deborah Muirhead Paintings, Artspace, New Haven, CT Gifted Vision, Nashua Center for the Arts, Nashua, NH Spirit Visions, curated by Helen Roseberry, Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN From Africa to Appalachia, curated by Sammie Nicely, Rose Center Gallery, Morristown, TN Tell the Children: An African American Legacy, Bijou Theater, Knoxville, TN The Best Folk of Nashville, curated by Susan Knowles, Metro Arts Commission, Nashville, TN Personal Show, Blount Memorial Hospital, Maryville, TN Bessie Harvey and Sammie Nicely, Bennet Gallery, Knoxville, TN American Resources: Selected Works of African American Artists and Outsider Artists, curated by Bernice Steinbaum, Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville, TN Arts Alive, Maryville College, Maryville, TN Personal Visions: Bessie Harvey and Homer Green, curated by Robert Cogswell, Tennessee Arts Commission Gallery, Nashville, TN Contemporary Visionaries, curated by Mia McEldowney, MIA Gallery, Seattle, WA

1988 Art from the African Diaspora, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ Women of Vision, Black American Folk Art, curated by Salvatore Solara, Atrium Gallery, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT Group Show, Harris Brown Gallery, Boston, MA Outsider Drawing-Creativity Explored, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Shape Shifting, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

Outside the Mainstream: Folk Art in Our Time, curated by Barbara Archer, High Museum of Art at Georgia- Pacific Center, Atlanta. Georgia Gifted Vision: Black American Folk Art, Atrium Gallery, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT The Figure Redefined, curated by Kathy Naylons, Primitivo Gallery, San Francisco, CA Visions and Voices, curated by Mia McEldowney, MIA Gallery, Seattle, WA

1987 Baking In The Sun: Visionary Images from the South, University Art Museum, University of Southeastern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA Outsider Art Fair, represented by Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY The Naive Figure: Eccentric Visions, Robeson Center Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ American Mysteries: The Rediscovery of Outsider Art, curated by John Ollman, Randall Morris, Shari Cavin and Donald Fontowitz, San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, San Francisco, CA Materializers, Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

BESSIE HARVEY Making the Mainstream, SVC Fine Art Gallery, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL Neo-Alchemy: Visionary Works by Trained and Untrained Artists, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Unsigned, Unsung—whereabouts unknown: make-do art of the American outlands, Florida State University Gallery and Museum, Tallahassee, FL The Naive Figure: Eccentric Visions, curated by Alison Weld, Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ Fact, Fiction, Fantasy: Recent Narrative Art in the Southeast, Ewing Gallery, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

1986 Visions of Heritage, Women's Art Registry of Minnesota, Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis, MN Outsider Sculpture, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY Bessie Harvey: Sculpture and Janyra Jones: Paintings, Harris Brown Gallery, Boston, MA Outsiders: Art Beyond the Norm, Rosa Esman Gallery, New York, NY Black American Folk Art, curated by Alison Weld, Paul Roberson Galleries, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ Making Do: Black Folk Arts in Tennessee, curated by Jessie C. Smith, Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN, in conjunction with Fisk University, Nashville, TN Sources in American Culture, curated by Julie Courtney, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South, Michael C. Carlons Museum at City Hall East, Druid Hills, Georgia

1984 Arts Mouth, Artists Space, New York, NY

Public Collections:

Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists, Boston, MA National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. C. Kermit Ewing Gallery, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Museum of American Folk Art, New York, NY Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY

Publications:

L'art brut, Collectif, Michel Thévoz, Citadelles & Mazenod Editions, Pages 506, 507, 508, 512, 513, Paris, France, 2018 Revelations: Art From The African American South, Timothy Anglin Burgard, FAMSF Publications, San Francisco, CA, 2017 When The Stars Begin To Fall: Imagination And The American South, Thomas J. Lax, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, 2014 The Artistic Madness of the American South, Ed Winstead, Hyperallergic, June 25, 2014 Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance, Page 208, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2006 Common Ground/Uncommon Vision: The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art, Russell Bowman, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, 2005 Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists, Lisa Farrington, Page 247–249, Oxford University Press, 2005 Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2001 Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art, Vol. 2, William Arnett, Lowery Sims, Jane Livingston, Paul Arnett, Tinwood Books, 2001 Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South: The Tree Gave the Dove a Leaf, Vol. 1, William Arnett, Paul Arnett, 2000 Bessie Harvey’s Sculpture: The Beast in the Tree Trunk, Paul Wardell Perry, The Crisis, July/August 2000

BESSIE HARVEY Contemporary women artists, Laurie Collier Hillstom, Kevin Hillstrom, St. James Press, Detroit, MI, 1999 Awakening the spirits: art by Bessie Harvey: an exhibition organized by the Knoxville Museum of Art, in collaboration with Austin-East High School: Knoxville, Tennessee, April 4-July 27, 1997, Stephen C. Wicks, Bessie Harvey, Judith E. Stein, Robert S. Cogswell, Knoxville Museum of Art., The Museum, 1997 . . . my magic pours secret libations, Florida State University Museum of Fine Art, Tallahassee, FL, 1996 A Labor of Love, Meg Linton, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY, 1996 The Tree of Life: The Inaugural Exhibition of the American Visionary Art Museum, Rebecca Hoffberger, Roger Manley, Colin Wilson, Baltimore, Maryland, 1996 Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present, Alice Rae Yelen, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, Univ. Pr. of Mississippi, Revised edition, 1995 Leslie King-Hammond, Gumbo Ya Ya, Midmarch Arts Press, Page 93, New York, NY, 1995 ÀSHE: Improvisation & Recycling in African-American Visionary Art, Tom Patterson, Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University, NC, ERIC Clearinghouse, 1993 Not By Luck: Self-Taught Artists in the American South, Tom Patterson, Lynne Ingram Southern Folk Art, Milford, New Jersey, 1st Edition,1993 Unsigned, Unsung...Whereabouts Unknown, Jim Roche, Florida State University Gallery & Museum / University of Washington Press, Tallahassee, FL, 1993 Contemporary American Folk Art, The Balsley Collection, Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, 1992 Diving in the Spirit, Robert Knott, Fine Arts Gallery, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 1992 Black Art - Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art, Alvia J. Wardlaw, David C. Driskell, Richard R. Brettel, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, 1990 Baking In The Sun: Visionary Images from the South, University Art Museum, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA, 1987 Bessie Harvey: The Spirit in the Wood, Shari Cavin Morris, The Clarion, Spring/Summer 1987

BESSIE HARVEY