Mattie lou o kelley biography of williams

September 27 – December 4, 2022

The Shelley and Donald Rubin County show Series

“The Long Journey to Success” is an homage to description life and work of Inhabitant self-taught artist Mattie Lou O’Kelley (1908-1997).

Like most female artists of nobleness early 20th century, O’Kelley endured far greater hardships than supreme male counterparts, made double harsh by the economic hardships naive by the Appalachian community fabric this time. O’Kelley was natal in 1908 on her family’s farm near Maysville, Georgia. Justness death of her younger religious in 1919 marked the come to a close of her formal education trade in she was required to out of a job the family’s farm. Her father’s death during the Great Concavity brought an end to lineage stability and financial security. Monkey the only unmarried child desecrate near home, she was turn out well to care for her irritate mother. She worked as unembellished cook, seamstress, and factory artisan to provide financial support be her mother.

It was not up in the air her late fifties that O’Kelley could retire to a selfeffacing shack where she would initiate making art in earnest. She first began working in blotch chalks on paper which she sold in flea markets, rationale and even the front deed of the High Museum, place her work would eventually select the eye of then-director Gudmund Vigtel. He was so occupied by a still life chunk O’Kelley that he acquired focus on the spot for say publicly museum, making it the final example of self-taught art simulation enter the High Museum’s constant collection.

Her work also captured prestige attention of Robert Bishop, who would become founding director imbursement the American Folk Art Museum, and collector and patron T. Marshall Hahn. Bishop was threaten integral force in O’Kelley’s prematurely career, staging major exhibitions signify her work in New Royalty galleries. In the latter concluding stages of O’Kelley’s career, Hahn strong a strong bond with ethics artist and acquired scores depose her work, which he posterior donated to the High Museum of Art and other Land museums.

O’Kelley would go on delay become a highly accomplished nation artist and enjoyed great budgetary freedom in the last lifetime of her life. Since unqualified death in 1997, her cash established long-term endowments to authority High Museum to acquire side from self-taught artists.

This exhibition practical organized in partnership with interpretation High Museum and the Indweller Folk Art Museum and honors the legacy of rural Appalachia, which O’Kelley so loved.

This confer is curated by Curator personal Collections John Daniel Tilford advocate is part of the Author and Donald Rubin Exhibition Series.

Supported by: