The Mennello Museum of American Art (Website) is hosting a screening of This World is Not My Own, a documentary about Georgia folk artist Nellie Mae Rowe, this Saturday, March 28, at 2 p.m.
The 97-minute film follows Rowe’s life from her birth on July 4, 1900, through her decades of making art in obscurity as the daughter of a sharecropper and former slave, to her late-life discovery by Atlanta gallerist Judith Alexander. As an adult, Rowe transformed her home in Vinings, Georgia, into her “Playhouse,” filling it with vibrant drawings, handmade dolls, sculptures, and chewing-gum figures.
The film, directed by Opendox (Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell), mixes documentary footage with 3D animated characters, voiced and motion-captured by actress Uzo Aduba (Orange is the New Black, Mrs. America). It has screened at SXSW, Hot Docs, the Atlanta Film Festival (where it won Best Cinematography), and the Hamptons International Film Festival.
Mennello holds Rowe’s work in its permanent collection and currently features her art in the exhibition Faith & Vision: Spirituality in Self-Taught Art, on view through May 3. Tickets are $11 and available HERE.
