Lonnie Holley

Lonnie Holley was born on February 10, 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama, the 7th of 27 children during the Jim Crow era and claims to have been traded for a bottle of whiskey when he was four. 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.

Holley started making sand sculptures at age twenty-nine and in time began working with found objects and painting. His assemblages, which bring together recycled and natural materials, remain his most widely known works. Holley was included in the 2006 book, The Last Folk Hero: A True Story of Race and Art, Power and Profit, about the collector Bill Arnett, and was featured in the landmark 1981 exhibition, More than Land and Sky: Art From Appalachia, at the National Museum of American Art.

Holley's major retrospective, Do We Think Too Much? I Don't Think We Can Ever Stop: Lonnie Holley, A Twenty-Five Year Survey, was organised by the Birmingham Museum of Art and travelled in 2003 to Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom.

His exhibition Thumbs Up for the Mothership (a two-artist show with Dawn DeDeaux) is currently at MASS MoCA I Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art until July 2019.

In 2012 at the age of 86 the self-taught musician released his debut album Just Before Music, followed by Keeping a Record of It the following year. In September 2018, he released his third and critically acclaimed album, MITH. Holley’s short film made to accompany the track “I Snuck Off The Slave Ship” from MITH premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

www.lonnieholley.com

Documentation