Lonnie Holley

Lonnie Holley was born on February 10, 1950, in Birmingham, Alabama, (during the Jim Crow era).^[2][4] From the age of five, Holley worked various jobs: picking up trash at a drive-in movie theatre, washing dishes, and cooking. He lived in a whiskey house, on the state fairgrounds, and in several foster homes. His early life was chaotic and Holley was never afforded the pleasure of a real childhood. Born the 7th of 27 children, Holley claims to have been traded for a bottle of whiskey when he was four.^[3]

Before beginning his career, he spent time digging graves and picking cotton. He claims to have been pronounced brain-dead after being hit by a car. He became a father at 15 and now has 15 children. Holley also worked as a short-order cook at Disney World. He also did time at a notorious juvenile facility, the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs.^[6]

Burnt Out (1994) at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

Holley began his artistic life in 1979 by carving tombstones for his sister's two children, who died in a house fire. He used blocks of a soft sandstone-like byproduct of metal casting which was discarded in piles by a foundry near his sister's house. He believes that divine intervention led him to the material and inspired his artwork. Inspired to create, Holley made other carvings and assembled them in his yard along with various found objects. In 1981, he brought a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Birmingham Museum of Art director Richard Murray. The BMA displayed some of those pieces immediately^[4] and Murray introduced him to the organizers of the 1981 exhibition "More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Soon his work was being acquired by other institutions, such as the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. His work has also been displayed at the White House.^[7]

Holley also became a popular guest at children's art events, bringing blocks of the foundry stone for children to carve. He gets special pleasure from sharing his experience of learning to love oneself through creative activity.

Luise Ross Gallery Exhibition Announcement.

By the mid-1980s his work had diversified to include paintings and recycled found-object sculptures. His yard and adjacent abandoned lots near his home became an immersive art environment that was celebrated by visitors from the art world, but threatened by scrap-metal scavengers and eventually, by the expansion of the Birmingham International Airport. In late 1996 Holley was notified that his hilltop property near the airport would be condemned.^[4] He rejected the airport authority's offer to buy the property at the market rate of $14,000, knowing that his site-specific installation had personal and artistic value he demanded $250,000. The dispute went to probate court and in 1997 a settlement was reached and the airport authority paid $165,700 to move Holley's family and work to a larger property in Harpersville, Alabama.

Holley's first major retrospective, Do We Think Too Much? I Don't Think We Can Ever Stop: Lonnie Holley, A Twenty-Five Year Survey, was organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art and traveled in 2003 to the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England. From May 2003 to May 2004, Holley created a "sprawling, sculptural environment" in the lower sculpture garden at the Birmingham Museum of Art as part of their "Perspectives" series of site-specific installations. The creation of the work was documented in the film "The Sandman's Garden" by Arthur Crenshaw and in photographs by Alice Faye "Sister" Love. Holley installed sculptural work for the exhibition Groundstory: Tales from the shade of the South, at Agnes Scott College of Decatur, Georgia, which ran at the Dalton Gallery from September 28 to November 17, 2012. In 2022, Lonnie Holley was named a Fellow and received an unrestricted cash award from United States Artists (USA), a Chicago-based arts funding organization.

Discover more about Visual art career related topics

National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

Birmingham Museum of Art

Birmingham Museum of Art

The Birmingham Museum of Art is a museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Its collection includes more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing various cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. The museum is also home to some Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculptures,and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c. 1750.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. The museum has more than 7,000 artists represented in the collection. Most exhibitions take place in the museum's main building, the old Patent Office Building, while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.

American Folk Art Museum

American Folk Art Museum

The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at 2, Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of contemporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad.

High Museum of Art

High Museum of Art

The High Museum of Art is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, the High is 312,000 square feet and a division of the Woodruff Arts Center.

White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800 when the national capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. The term "White House" is often used as metonymy for the president and his advisers.

Harpersville, Alabama

Harpersville, Alabama

Harpersville is a town in Shelby County, Alabama, United States. According to the 1950 U.S. Census, it formally incorporated in 1943. At the 2020 census the population was 1,614, compared to 1,637 in 2010 and 1,620 in 2000. It is located southeast of the Birmingham metro area.

Ikon Gallery

Ikon Gallery

The Ikon Gallery is an English gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Grade II listed, neo-gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877.

Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West Midlands metropolitan county, and approximately 4.3 million in the wider metropolitan area. It is the largest UK metropolitan area outside of London. Birmingham is commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom.

England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea area of the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.

Agnes Scott College

Agnes Scott College

Agnes Scott College is a private women's liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia. The college enrolls approximately 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The college is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and is considered one of the Seven Sisters of the South. It also offers co-educational graduate programs.

United States Artists

United States Artists

United States Artists (USA) is a national arts funding organization based in Chicago. USA is dedicated to supporting living artists and cultural practitioners across the United States by granting unrestricted awards.

Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, September 18, 2022 – March 26, 2023, curated by Harry Cooper.

Holley performing in Aarhus, Denmark (2018)

Holley's professional music career began in 2006 ^[8] when he made improvisational vocal recordings, at the urging of Matt Arnett (son of William Arnett), in an Alabama church using just a keyboard and a microphone.^[9] In 2012, he released his debut album Just Before Music on the Dust-to-Digital label, followed by Keeping a Record of It the following year. In September 2018, he released his third album MITH on Jagjaguwar.^[10] In April 2021, Holley released a collaboration album with Matthew E. White titled Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection.^[11] Also in 2022, he has begun to record his fourth album. In 2023, Holley will co-teach a course for the Pilchuck Glass School, with artist John Drury.

Discover more about Music career related topics

Lonnie Holley with his sculpture Drilling for Greedy, 2011

• The Washington Post listed Just Before Music on its list of the Top 10 albums of 2013.^[12]
• Pitchfork gave Holley's 2018 album MITH a 7.9 out of 10 rating.^[13]
• Pitchfork gave Holley's 2020 album National Freedom a 8.0 out of 10 rating.^[14]
• Pitchfork gave Holley's 2023 album Oh Me Oh My a 8.5 out of 10 rating.^[15]

• Just Before Music (2012)
• Keeping a Record of It (2013)
• Live on the Modern World with DJ Trouble – April 2013
• MITH (2018)
• National Freedom (2020)
• Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection (2021) – with Matthew E. White
• Oh Me Oh My (2023)