Lonnie Bradley Holley (born February 10, 1950), sometimes known as the Sand Man,[1][2] is an American artist, art educator and musician. He is best known for his assemblages and immersive environments made of found materials. In 1981, he brought a few of his sandstone carvings to then-Birmingham Museum of Art director Richard Murray, who helped to promote his work. In addition to solo exhibitions at the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, Holley has exhibited in group exhibitions with other Black artists from the American South at the Michael C. Carlos Museum and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, de Young Museum in San Francisco, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, among other places.

Holley's work is included in the representation of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.[3]

His albums are Just Before Music (2012), Keeping a Record of It (2013), MITH (2018), National Freedom (2020), Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection, a collaboration with Matthew E. White (2021), Oh Me Oh My (2023), and Tonky (2025).

Early life

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 several foster homes. His early life was chaotic, and Holley was never afforded the pleasure of a real childhood. Born the seventh of 27 children, Holley claims to have been traded for a bottle of whiskey when he was four.[4][5]

Before beginning his career, Holley 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.[4]

Visual art career

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 he found discarded in piles by a foundry near his sister's house. Holley believes that divine intervention led him to the material and inspired his artwork. Inspired similarly, he made other carvings and assembled them in his yard along with various found objects. In 1981, Holley 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 in Washington, D.C. Soon Holley 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.[6]

Holley also became a guest at children's art events, bringing blocks of the foundry stone for children to carve.

Exhibition announcement, Luise Ross Gallery, New York City, 1993
Lonnie Holley with his sculpture Drilling for Greedy, 2011

By the mid-1980s, Holley's 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.

Holley was included in the 1996 group exhibition "Souls Grown Deep: African-American Vernacular Art of the South," an exhibition of over 450 artworks by 29 other contemporary artists, highlighting a significant artistic tradition that has risen in concert with the Civil Rights Movement. Held at Michael C. Carlos Museum at City Hall East in Atlanta, it was organized by the museum, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) Cultural Olympiad, and the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs. Newsweek critic Malcolm Jones Jr., in his review of the show singled out Holley's work writing,

Other exhibitions

Music career

Holley performing in Aarhus, Denmark, 2018

Holley's professional music career began in 2006[23] 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.[24] 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.[25] Pitchfork gave it' a 7.9 out of 10 rating.[26]

Pitchfork gave Holley's 2020 album National Freedom an 8.0 out of 10 rating.[27]

In April 2021, Holley released a collaboration album with Matthew E. White titled Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection.[28] Also in 2022, he has begun to record his fourth album, Oh Me Oh My, which was released on March 10, 2023, to critical acclaim:[29] Pitchfork gave it an 8.5 out of 10 rating,[30] and Paste included it on its list of the Top 10 albums of 2023,[31] and the Washington Post interviewed Holley for it.[32]

Discography

  • 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)
  • Tonky (2025)

References

  1. ↑ "Lonnie Holley: Just Before Music". Dust Digital. Archived from the original on 2 May 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  2. 1 2 Rosenak, Chuck; Rosenak, Jan (1990). Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of twentieth-century American folk art and artists. Abbeville Publishing Group. p. 158. ISBN 1-55859-041-2. OCLC 22183658.
  3. ↑ "Lonnie Holley". Souls Grown Deep. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Binelli, Mark (23 January 2014). "Lonnie Holley, the Insider's Outsider". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  5. ↑ Fitzgerald, Rob (13 November 2013). "The 101 strangest records on Spotify: Lonnie Holley – Just Before Music". The Guardian.
  6. ↑ Petrusich, Amanda (22 October 2018). "Lonnie Holley's Glorious Improvisations". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-06-26.
  7. ↑ "SOULS GROWN DEEP: AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ART OF THE SOUTH". Souls Grown Deep.
  8. ↑ "MARY LEE BENDOLPH, GEE'S BEND QUILTS, AND BEYOND". Souls Grown Deep.
  9. ↑ "WHEN THE STARS BEGIN TO FALL: IMAGINATION AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH". Souls Grown Deep.
  10. ↑ "SOMETHING TO TAKE MY PLACE: THE ART OF LONNIE HOLLEY". Souls Grown Deep.
  11. ↑ "AUGUST 22 - OCTOBER 10, 2015 Lonnie Holley SOMETHING TO TAKE MY PLACE". Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art.
  12. ↑ "de Young's 'Revelations' Unveils a Hidden History of Black Artistic Resistance". KQED. 25 September 2017.
  13. ↑ "HISTORY REFUSED TO DIE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SOULS GROWN DEEP FOUNDATION GIFT". Souls Grown Deep.
  14. ↑ Miller, D. Scot (23 May 2018). "The Met unpacks its Souls Grown Deep gift". The Art Newspaper.
  15. ↑ "History Refused to Die Review A Visual Equivalent of Jazz". The Wall Street Journal.
  16. ↑ "SOULS GROWN DEEP: ARTISTS OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN SOUTH". Souls Grown Deepz.
  17. ↑ "What Carried Us Over: Gifts from the Gordon W. Bailey Collection • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-09-28.
  18. ↑ "Toledo Museum of Art spotlights acquisitions from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in exhibition early next year". Toledo Museum of Art. 28 August 2021.
  19. ↑ "Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South". National Gallery of Art.
  20. ↑ "OUTLIERS AND AMERICAN VANGUARD ART". Souls Grown Deep.
  21. ↑ "We Will Walk – Art and Resistance in the American South". Turner Contemporary.
  22. ↑ "Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers Black Artists from the American South". Royal Academy of Arts.
  23. ↑ Cascone, Sarah (June 15, 2022). "Studio Visit: Step Into the Jam-Packed Studio of Lonnie Holley, Whose Latest Works Include Ceramics and Musical Compositions". news.artnet.com. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  24. ↑ O'Hagan, Sean (May 1, 2022). "'It's like one continuous song pours out of him': meet the shaman-like artist-musician Lonnie Holley". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  25. ↑ Heaton, Dave (27 January 2021). "Keeping a Record of It Review". PopMatters (published 2014-01-30).
  26. ↑ Hussey, Allison (27 September 2018). "Lonnie Holley: MITH". Pitchfork.com.
  27. ↑ Bloom, Madison (6 July 2020). "Lonnie Holley: National Freedom". Pitchfork.
  28. ↑ Simpson, Paul. "Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection Album Review". AllMusic.
  29. ↑ Oh Me Oh My by Lonnie Holley, Metacritic, retrieved 2023-09-26
  30. ↑ Schoenfeld, Zach (15 March 2023). "Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  31. ↑ "The 10 Best Albums of March 2023". Paste magazine.
  32. ↑ Lingan, John (10 March 2023). "Lonnie Holley always manages to find the beauty in terror". Washington Post.

Sources

  • Dietz, Andrew (April 1, 2006) The Last Folk Hero: A True Story of Race and Art, Power and Profit. Atlanta: Ellis Lane Press. ISBN 0-9771968-0-1
  • Reeves, Jay (February 8, 1997) "Acclaimed folk artist losing fight against FAA and urban sprawl." Associated Press.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Holley