Overview

Visionary self-taught Southern folk artist Minnie Evans receives a long overdue encore of her mystical, divinely inspired drawings Published with High Museum of Art. American artist Minnie Evans (1892–1987) once said her drawings of harmoniously intertwined human, botanical and animal forms came from visions of ""the lost world,"" or nations destroyed by the Great Flood as described in the Book of Genesis. As the visions she experienced in childhood became stronger, Evans produced a large body of work ranging from abstract to representational styles. When she turned 56, she transitioned from decades of employment as a domestic worker to collecting admissions at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, North Carolina. She made art during idle moments and hung it on and near the Gardens' wrought-iron gate. Selling or giving away her drawings to visitors led to a wider reputation and eventually a 1966 exhibition at a New York church titled The Lost World of Minnie Evans. This publication reprises that 1966 title, honoring Evans' interest in biblical and ancient civilizations while foregrounding the spiritual and historical circumstances of her extraordinary life. More than 100 of her artworks are presented in a range of contexts, from the extrasensory experiences of her visions to the double-edged realities of her life in the Jim Crow South. Her drawings, beautiful and complex, thus become portals into her ""lost world.""

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9781636812199

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Reviews

[This] catalog offers a luminous glimpse into the countless drawings Evans crafted by fusing her spiritual visions with quotidian experiences in the American South and inspiration drawn from lush Airlie Gardens, where she worked for over 25 years. -- Lakshmi Rivera Amin * Hyperallergic * [Skillings’s] poems read a bit like absurdist theater set in a haunted dollhouse. -- Elisa Gabbert * The New York Times * The retrospective offers us a chance to sidestep othering narratives from the past and consider her work on its own terms. -- TK Smith * Art in America | Reframed *

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