The

whimsical folk art of Fayetteville-born Nellie Mae Rowe

will be exhibited starting this Saturday at the High

Museum of Art Downtown Galleries.

"The

Art of Nellie Mae Rowe: Ninety-Nine and a Half Won't

Do," is a 90-piece collection of colorful drawings

and collages, mixed media sculptures, chewing gum figures

and hand-sewn dolls created by the late artist.

Lynn

Spriggs, curator of folk art at the High, said the

exhibit "gives viewers an opportunity to witness the

great spirit of creative celebration with which Rowe

lived her life. While she regularly used her works as

expressions of play and free invention, Rowe also created

each piece with a tremendous sense of purpose," said

Spriggs.

Rowe's most

artistic period spanned the last 50 years of her life

when she occupied a small house in Vinings, which she

decorated inside and out with her original art. Rowe

called it her "playhouse."

Her

drawings are described as "highly detailed and

vividly colored" and include self portraits,

friends, barnyard animals and local personalities. Lee

Kogan, exhibition curator explained that Rowe's art

derives from the natural world. "It is rooted in

regionally based cultural traditions, but comes from the

wellspring of her vivid imagination," said Kogan.

"Rowe's creative expression mirrored her life

journey, and her perceptions linked seemingly separate

realms into a unity of organic forms: heaven and earth;

reality and fantasy; spirituality and sensuality;

transformation, time and space."

The title

of the exhibit, "Ninety-Nine and Half Won't

Do," comes from a gospel song of the same name. It

was sung at Rowe's funeral and according to Kogan, it

summed up her credo of living life to the fullest, with

energy and without artifice.

"You

see a bird, he is way up in the air flying, but when he

gets ready to light, he has to come back to the ground.

So that's me - I'm on the ground and I'm going to stay

here. I may go up a little bit, but I'm not going to fly

so high I can't get back to the ground. That is the life

I am living," said Rowe.

The artist

was born in Fayetteville July 4, 1900 to Sam and Luella

Swanson Williams. According to Kogan, she was raised on a

farm in a two-story house that her father, a former

slave, rented for his family that consisted of his wife,

son and nine daughters. Both parents were craftsmen, her

father a basket weaver and her mother a quilter.

Rowe

married Ben Wheat at age 16 and moved to Vinings 14 years

later. She worked as a domestic most of her life. Wheat

died in 1936 and she later married Henry Rowe. They built

the house on Paces Ferry Road which would become her

"playhouse" and most public display. The

Wyndham Hotel now occupies the site of her home, but a

small plaque marks the spot where Rowe lived. She died in

1982 at the age of 82.

The High

Museum of Folk Art and Photography Galleries are downtown

in the Georgia Pacific Center, near the Peachtree Center

MARTA station, at 133 Peachtree St. on the corner of John

Wesley Dobbs Avenue. The hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Monday through Saturday. For information, phone

404-577-6940. Admission to the downtown galleries is

free. Rowe's retrospective exhibit runs Nov. 20 through

Feb. 26.

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