Alabama-born artist Lonnie Holley responded to the atrocious social conditions of the Jim Crow South of his childhood by elevating himself via the creation of his own beautiful world, turning trash into whimsical, surreal sculptures that were championed by esteemed art collector Bill Arnett. His works have since been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, Ikon Gallery, and the National Gallery of Art.
Holley was abandoned by his mother when he was four—traded for a bottle of whiskey, he says—and started working when he was five, going on to do time at the infamous Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. While still a child he was hit and dragged by a car, spending several weeks in a coma. His art career started in 1979 when he carved headstones out of sandstone for his sister’s two children, who had died in a housefire. Soon after that first foray, Holley, a USA Artist Fellow who himself has 15 children, began creating his signature assemblages as well as quilts, paintings, and films.
Music is another medium for the septuagenarian, who has released seven albums: 2023’s Oh Me Oh My features guests Bon Iver, Michael Stipe, and Sharon Van Etten. Lonnie Holley and Friends will perform at The Local in Saugerties on January 21 at 6pm. Tickets to the perfromance are $29.87.
—Peter Aaron
You started your artistic career by carving sandstone sculptures and then moved more into painting and the assemblages that you’ve become so well known for. What led you into working in these other mediums?
I have always made things. Ever since I was young, traveling in the creeks and ditches. The sandstone carvings were the first thing I’d made that anyone paid any attention to, but I’d always created other things. Even when people knew about me, they’d walk right past sculptures to look at sandstones. Bill Arnett was the first person who ever took any interest in my found-object sculptures. Most people before him were just blind to them. I remember the first day I met Bill, he was so excited looking at and hearing me tell him about the sculptures. He was the first person who even asked me what they were about. Even now, I make work out of whatever materials speak to me.
Your artworks are often imbued with symbolic meaning, sometimes several layers of it. When you create a piece, does it usually reveal its meaning to you after you’ve finished it, or do you tend to be conscious of the meaning during the process of making it? Do you ever begin making a piece with the aim of wanting it to say something specific?
It can happen all different kinds of ways. I would say usually I have an idea before I start making something. That’s almost always true with a sculpture. It’s usually the material that inspires the piece. If I see or pick up something that had a previous use, that often inspires the work. If I’m putting things together, I’m taking the lives of all the materials and giving them a new life and new meaning. If I’m painting, usually an idea comes to me and the painting is a response to that idea. But sometimes I just start painting and it soon starts to make sense to me. All of my art, either visual art or music, is about something. There is so much always going on in the world that it wouldn’t make sense not to art about it.
How does your approach to making music compare to the approach you have to making your other art?
I’ve always said that my art and my music come from the same brain and are like twins. I don’t see much difference between a keyboard and a paint brush or my voice and piece of material. My art pieces are like a song, but you have to use your eyes to hear them. And my music is like a sculpture that you have to use your ears to see. I made my first real recordings in 2006, but never really did anything with that stuff. I think my first record came out in 2012, but I didn’t think of myself as a professional. The things I sing about and the things I make art about are really the same. I always tell audiences that I’m not there to rock them or make them dance, I’m there hopefully to make them think.
Your music is improvised but it also seems like it has a strong feeling of gospel music, and you made your first recordings in a church in 2006. Did you play or sing gospel music when you were a child? What music and which musicians have moved and inspired you during your life?
Matt Arnett [son of Bill Arnett] was recording the Gee’s Bend quilters and he rented out one of the churches in Gee’s Bend to do that. He invited me to come down and record some of my music after the gospel music recording was finished for the day, so it wasn’t intentional that my first recordings happened in a church. When I was little I lived right behind the drive-in theater and right next to the state fairgrounds. I listened to so much music in those two places. I also learned so many field songs at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. When my grandmother got me out of there, I spent time in church with her and heard a lot of gospel and spiritual music. And she used to wake up in the morning and I’d hear her moaning and singing. I wanted to sing in church and give testimony, but I never really had much chance. My testimony was too long. I always listened to a lot of different kinds of music. Everything from Johnnie Taylor and James Brown to Loretta Lynn and Bob Dylan, who is one of my favorites. All music inspires me.
What do you most hope people feel when they see your art or hear your music? In these especially turbulent times, how does art help people and help the world?
I’ve said it before, because it’s true, that art saved my life. I don’t think I’d be alive today if I hadn’t found art as a way out. I don’t think I want people to feel any particular way when they see my work or hear my music. I just want them to listen and look. How it moves them or doesn’t is up to them. For so long people like me didn’t have outlets for our work. Museums and galleries didn’t show it and venues didn’t invite us to perform. So I’m just honored that I can travel and share my music and people can go in museums and see my art and read about me. I hope they are moved, but it’s up to them to decide how. If you are looking for fiction, my art and music are probably not for you. I try to bring the truth every time.
This article appears in January 2024.
