Lonnie Holley
“He keeps people spellbound with his oratory, humor, and insights into art-making. Holley’s s art does the same. He makes the kind of sculpture–and produces the kind of music–that changes people. It gets into their emotional and intellectual core and forces them to rethink art and history, as well as their own assumptions about how the world works.” – SF Weekly
Lonnie Holley was born on February 10, 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama. 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.
Since 1979, Holley has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity. His art and music, born out of struggle, hardship, but perhaps more importantly, out of furious curiosity and biological necessity, has manifested itself in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and sound. Holley’s sculptures are constructed from found materials in the oldest tradition of African American sculpture. Objects, already imbued with cultural and artistic metaphor, are combined into narrative sculptures that commemorate places, people, and events. His work is now in collections of major museums throughout the country, on permanent display in the United Nations, and been displayed in the White House Rose Garden. In January of 2014, Holley completed a one-month artist-in-residence with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva Island, Florida, site of the acclaimed artist’s studio.
Holley has released five critically acclaimed albums––Just Before Music, 2012; Keeping a Record of It, 2013; MITH, 2018; National Freedom, 2020; Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection (with Matthew E. White), 2021. His sixth album, Oh Me Oh My, produced by Jacknife Lee, which includes collaborations with Bon Iver, Michael Stipe (REM), Moor Mother, Sharon Van Etten, and Rokia Koné, comes out March 10, 2023, on Jagjaguwar.
He has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand, and shared stages with Bon Iver, Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Bill Callahan, Saul Williams, Tinariwen, Daniel Lanois, and many others.
He has also experimented with film, photography, and video throughout his career. His directorial debut, the short narrative film I Snuck Off the Slave Ship, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
The 2023 podcast, Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, follows the history of the infamous reform school in Alabama (which many refer to as a “slave camp for kids”) and profiles Holley’s early life and the struggles he and so many others suffered at the hands of the state of Alabama.
In 2022 Holley was named a USA Artist Fellow. His visual art is represented by Blum & Poe Gallery (Los Angeles) and Edel Assanti Gallery (London). He continues to make art and music from his home and studio in Atlanta, Georgia.
Lonnie Holley
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