210 eleventh avenue, ste 201 new york, ny 10001 t 212 226 3768 f 212 226 0155 CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY e [email protected] www.cavinmorris.com BESSIE HARVEY (born October 11, 1929 in Dallas, 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, Atlanta, 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 Studio Museum in Harlem, 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, American Folk Art Museum, 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, Chicago, 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, Florida State University 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, Baltimore, 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, New Orleans, 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, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI ÀSHE: Improvisation & Recycling in African-American