{{short description|American sculptor (1929–1994)}} {{use mdy dates|date=May 2023}} {{Infobox artist | bgcolour = | name = Bessie Harvey | image =Bessie_Harvey.jpg | imagesize = | caption = Harvey, Golden Dreams (n.d.) | birth_name = Bessie Ruth White | birth_date = {{Birth date|1929|10|11|}} | birth_place = Dallas, Georgia, United States | death_date = {{death date and age|1994|08|12|1929|10|11}} | death_place = Alcoa, Tennessee, United States | field = Sculpture | training = Self-taught | movement = | works = | patrons = | influenced by = | influenced = | awards = }}
<!-- thumb|right|225px|Bessie Harvey, Golden Dreams (n.d.)<br />(Photograph by Charles Rotmil)--> '''Bessie Harvey''' (born '''Bessie Ruth White'''; October 11, 1929 – August 12, 1994) was an American artist best known for her sculptures constructed out of found objects, primarily pieces of wood. A deeply religious person, Harvey's faith and her own interest in nature were primary sources for her work.
==Early life and family== Born Bessie Ruth White in Dallas, Georgia, she was the seventh of 13 children born to Homer and Rosie Mae White. As a child, she made toys and sculptures out of twigs.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bessie Harvey {{!}} Smithsonian American Art Museum |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/bessie-harvey-6462 |access-date=2025-03-04 |website=americanart.si.edu |language=en}}</ref> Overtime, these once simple structures grew in complexity - into the sculptures we see today. At the age of 14, Bessie married Charles Harvey and settled in Buena Vista, Georgia.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of American Folk Art|last=Wertkin|first=Gerard C|date=2014|isbn=9780203644485|oclc = 999123349|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":3" /> She divorced Harvey in 1968 and relocated independently to Alcoa, Tennessee, where she was raising 11 children by the age of 35.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/40869639.html|title=Contemporary women artists|last1=Hillstrom|first1=Laurie Collier|last2=Hillstrom|first2=Kevin|date=1999|publisher=St. James Press|location=Detroit|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":2" /> As a child, she recalls making "something out of nothing," often creating her own toys and dolls.<ref name="bird">{{cite web|last1=Harvey|first1=Bessie|title=Bird and Spirit Root by Bessie Harvey|url=http://intuitiveeye.org/Bird-and-Spirit-Root-by-Bessie-Harvey|website=intuitiveeye.org|access-date=8 March 2015}}</ref>
In addition to having 11 children, Harvey had 28 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.<ref name=":2" />
== Career == In 1977, Harvey began working at Blount Memorial Hospital as a housekeeper. For extra income, at night while everyone was asleep Harvey would make dolls.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Gumbo Ya Ya|last=King-Hammond|first=Leslie|publisher=Midmarch Arts Press|year=1995|isbn=1-877675-07-5|location=New York|pages=93}}</ref> She entered one of her sculptures, a work entitled "Banda", into the hospital's yearly art show which then sold, beginning her artistic career.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Harvey |first1=Bessie |title=Bessie Harvey |url=https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/bessie-harvey |website=Souls Grown Deep |access-date=20 July 2023}}</ref> One of the staff doctors introduced her to the directors of the Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York City, which continued to sell her work exclusively for several years.<ref name=":1" />
== Works == Harvey's sculptures are made of found materials, predominantly wood branches and roots, which she then decorated with paint, glitter, jewelry, and other materials. Though she worked primarily with wood, Harvey also created sculptures from clay and some works on paper.<ref>{{cite book |title=Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South |date=1999 |publisher=Tinwood Books |pages=41 |isbn=9780965376600 |url=https://archive.org/details/soulsgrowndeepaf0000unse/page/40/mode/2up?q=bessie+harvey}}</ref> She began creating art in 1974, shortly after her mother, Rosie White, died.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Simmons |first1=Frederica |title=The Gift of Humanity in Bessie Harvey's Art, An Interview With Faye Harvey Dean |url=https://hyperallergic.com/710283/the-gift-of-humanity-in-bessie-harveys-art/ |website=Hyperallergic |date=February 10, 2022 |access-date=20 July 2023}}</ref>
Harvey's work belongs to a larger tradition of black vernacular art created in the American South. The assemblage aspect of her work, the use of found materials, and emphasis on religious themes are common to the black vernacular art tradition. As a creator of visionary art, she often claims that God is the main source for her work, even to the extent that He is working through her: "I’m really not the artist. God is the artist in my work; nature and insects, they shape my work for me, because they belong to God. I belong to God, and all things belong to God, because it’s in his Word that all things are made to him, that without him there’s not anything made."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Harvey|first1=Bessie|title=God is the Artist|url=http://soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/bessie-harvey|website=Souls Grown Deep|access-date=8 March 2015}}</ref> According to Harvey, God allowed her to see anthropomorphic forms within the wood she worked with, and with that help she could give physical shape to the spiritual presences within these tree roots, limbs, and pieces of driftwood. Her interest in nature was due in part to her belief that she could access or see the spirit of her ancestors within trees, for example, and her general belief in transcendentalism.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}}
Her work often reflected specific biblical stories, including stories from Genesis and Revelation.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=American Folk Art: A Regional Reference|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2012|isbn=9780313349362|pages=200–202}}</ref> She also created a series of works inspired by the African-American experience in the United States.<ref>{{Cite journal|url = http://issuu.com/american_folk_art_museum/docs/clarion_12_3_spr-sum1987|title = Bessie Harvey: the Spirit in the Wood|last = Morris|first = Shari Cavin|date = 1987|journal = The Clarion|access-date = 8 March 2015}}</ref> When naming her works, she frequently used an African-English dictionary to provide a direct connection to her African heritage.<ref name=":2" />
== Exhibitions, holdings, and influence == Harvey's work has been included in over 50 exhibitions, including a posthumous inclusion in the 1995 Whitney Biennial. Her work ''Cross Bearers'' was subsequently purchased by the Whitney Museum for its permanent collection.<ref>{{Cite journal|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=FEMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA76|title = Bessie Harvey's Sculpture: The Beast in the Tree Trunk|last = Perry|first = Paul Wardell|date = 2000|journal = The Crisis|access-date = 8 March 2015|issue = July–August 2000}}</ref> She was also the subject of a major retrospective in 1997 at the Knoxville Museum of Art.<ref>{{Cite book|title = The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Volume 1|publisher = Oxford University Press|year = 2011|isbn = 9780195335798|pages = 465}}</ref> Her works are in the permanent collections of the Knoxville Museum of Art<ref>{{Cite book|title=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|last=C.|first=Wicks, Stephen|date=1997|publisher=The Museum|others=Harvey, Bessie, 1929-1994., Stein, Judith E., Cogswell, Robert S., Knoxville Museum of Art., Austin-East High School (Knoxville, Tenn.)|isbn=0963588141|location=Knoxville, Tenn.|oclc=37004186}}</ref> the American Folk Art Museum, New York, and KMAC Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Archive |url=https://www.kmacmuseum.org/archive |access-date=2023-03-24 |website=kmacmuseum |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.sites.si.edu/images/exhibits/ancestry_innovation/slideshow/pages/2004-23-1-Black-Horse_jpg.htm |title=''Ancestry & Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum'' Smithsonian Institution, 2001 |access-date=2010-09-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100721060854/http://www.sites.si.edu/images/exhibits/ancestry_innovation/slideshow/pages/2004-23-1-Black-Horse_jpg.htm |archive-date=2010-07-21 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url = http://collection.folkartmuseum.org/view/people/asitem/H/6?t:state:flow=d3bd52eb-199c-43d2-afd3-e64413bca270|title = Artists: Bessie Harvey|access-date = 8 March 2015|website = American Folk Art Museum|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150402115449/http://collection.folkartmuseum.org/view/people/asitem/H/6?t:state:flow=d3bd52eb-199c-43d2-afd3-e64413bca270|archive-date = 2 April 2015|url-status = dead}}</ref> Some of Harvey's works were also purchased from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as part of an acquisition of the works of African American artists from the Southern United States.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|date=2017-02-02|title=Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Make Historic Acquisition of 62 Works of African American Art from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation|url=https://deyoung.famsf.org/press-room/fine-arts-museums-san-francisco-make-historic-acquisition-62-works-african-american-art|access-date=2021-03-06|website=de Young|language=en|archive-date=November 30, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201130053817/https://deyoung.famsf.org/press-room/fine-arts-museums-san-francisco-make-historic-acquisition-62-works-african-american-art|url-status=dead}}</ref> This work was displayed in an exhibition called Revelations: Art from the African American South from June 3, 2017 through April 1, 2018.<ref name=":4" /> Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, and included in the exhibit of Black American Artists of the American South ''Called to Create''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South |url=https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/called-to-create.html |access-date=2022-09-24 |website=www.nga.gov}}</ref> Harvey's work continues to be featured in exhibitions in museums such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Turner Contemporary in England as part of exhibitions on African American artwork from the American South.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Souls Grown Deep: Artists of the African American South {{!}} Souls Grown Deep|url=https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/exhibition/souls-grown-deep-artists-african-american-south|access-date=2021-03-06|website=www.soulsgrowndeep.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=We Will Walk – Art and Resistance in the American South {{!}} Souls Grown Deep|url=https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/exhibition/we-will-walk-%E2%80%93-art-and-resistance-american-south|access-date=2021-03-06|website=www.soulsgrowndeep.org}}</ref>
Harvey has been cited as an influence by Alison Saar,<ref>{{Cite book|title = Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance|publisher = JHU Press|year = 2006|isbn = 9780801883699|pages = 208}}</ref> and a street in Alcoa has been named after her.<ref>{{Cite book|title = Alcoa|publisher = Arcadia Publishing|year = 2011|isbn = 9780738587813|pages = 123}}</ref>
== Selected exhibitions == ''Called To Create: Black Artists of the American South'', National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, September 18, 2022 – March 26, 2023.
== References == {{Reflist|30em}}
== External links == * {{cite web |url= http://www.blounttoday.com/news/2008/oct/09/bessie-harvey-remembered/ |title= Remembering Bessie Harvey |date= October 9, 2008 |publisher= Blount Today |location= Maryville, TN |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120307003929/http://www.blounttoday.com/news/2008/oct/09/bessie-harvey-remembered/ |archive-date= March 7, 2012 |url-status= dead}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Harvey, Bessie}} Category:1929 births Category:1994 deaths Category:20th-century African-American artists Category:20th-century American sculptors Category:20th-century American women artists Category:African-American sculptors Category:American outsider artists Category:People from Alcoa, Tennessee Category:People from Dallas, Georgia Category:American women outsider artists Category:Sculptors from Tennessee Category:Sculptors from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:20th-century African-American women artists