Mythologies of the world honor trees as ancient entities that view the passage of the ages in patient wisdom. Artists, writers, and healers have always shown an especial sensitivity to the life force that is present in trees, whether benign or hostile, and have attempted to activate that vitality through interventions in tree, root, or branch. There is a particularly strong tradition of such activations in African art, and it is this ancestry that artist Bessie Harvey consciously strove to release in her powerful root sculptures: “I have a feeling for Africa. I see African people in the trees and in the roots. I talk to the trees. There’s souls in the branches and roots. I frees them.” Harvey began her artmaking in the 1970s, when she was struggling to raise eleven children as a single parent. The transformational aspect of these root sculptures is apparent in this late work, one of a group of three related sculptures created in the last year of the artist’s life.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Faces of Africa II," exhibition label for Jubilation|Rumination: Life, Real and Imagined. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2012.