CINEMA

Lonnie Holley Alabama. Recycling. Found Objects. The Sand Man. Dust-to-Digital. Words Andy Thomas Portrait Jerry Buttles Photographs William Arnett courtesy of Souls Grown Deep Foundation soulsgrowndeep.org

Lonnie Holley is a self-taught visual have money to bury the kids or get them mother but ended up in detention. After artist turned avant-garde musician whose grave markers. I was just trying to think numerous escape attempts, he was sent recycled assemblage and free improvising of something to keep my sister from to the notorious correctional facility, the puts him somewhere between Sun Ra being so upset. I went to another sister’s Alabama Industrial School for Negro and Robert Rauschenberg. Going by the house near a foundry and I came across Children. “I was almost beaten to death name the Sand Man, the Alabama artist this core sand. I picked a piece and took there,” he recalls. “I’d get a whooping rose from obscurity in the 1980s to have it to my grandfather’s house. I started every day for not knowing how to pick his found-art sculptures displayed by the cutting the stone. With the crosscut saw cotton. Every single day.” Word fi nally Smithsonian American Art Museum. it was such an even and smooth cut, it got to his grandma, who picked Holley His supporters are many: collector showed me I could work it easily. This up and went on to raise him. After the William Arnett, who discovered Holley was the fi rst time I had made anything 1979 accident, he entered a period of while researching African-American art that later I got to know as art.” depression and believes that divine from the Deep South; more recently, Looking back now, Holley thinks intervention led him to the material Arnett’s son Matt who, after hearing the he’s created art since he can remember. that inspired his fi rst works. primal, spiritual blues on one of hundreds “Pretty much all my life I had been Within four months of making those of DIY cassettes Holley horded in his making things. From fi ve years old I was tombstone sculptures, he’d created more Alabama home, arranged to have the up and down the ditches and creeks as than 100 pieces. Encouraged by a friend, material released; and -based part of my playtime. I didn’t really know he loaded his car with some works and documentarian George King who, for what I was doing, or understand it. But took them to the Museum 18 years, has followed the creative I would stack up rocks and take glass and of Art. Then director Richard Murray endeavours of a man whose art was born things and put them together. Just the loved both the art and the words Holley from a life of hardship and resilience. debris, the trash people didn’t want.” used to describe it. He showed photos of His artistic path began in tragedy. “I Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in the pieces, including Time and Baby started with art when I made sandstone 1950, Holley was seventh of 27 children. Being Born, to a Smithsonian curator, sculptures as tombstones for my sister’s He was taken from his mother at the age and Holley got his fi rst big break. Over children,” he tells me over the phone of two. At age seven, living with a family the next decade, he made thousands of while on tour in New York. It was 1979 called the McElroys, he was hit by a car small and large-scale works, creating a when his niece and nephew were killed and spent three months in a coma. When junk art yard stretching for two acres in a house fi re. He was 29. “We didn’t he recovered, he ran away to look for his behind his family’s property. Rusted oil >

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Dish of the Receiver, 1983 Defense, 1997

In Bed with Him (The Old Man and the Young Girl), 1995 drums splattered with luminous paint, he found confirmed what Arnett had of these artists.” Many would feature plastic flowers, animal bones, burned- suspected. “Lonnie was the first artist I in two volumes of Souls Grown Deep: out TVs, twisted metal pipes, old door met who was doing things I knew were African-American Vernacular Art of the frames and slashed tyres, mixed up to done traditionally all over the South, in South. “There was all these people who’d living. We try to rid ourselves of it but drainage and water pollution close up. creating junk art yards. Joe Minter made create a wild but magical installation. yards, out of sight. It was totally hidden. been ignored,” says Holley. “Travelling throw it no further than the trash site. He’s very knowledgeable, passionate his African Village junk-sculpture park “This Art Works from the Spirits” and I started looking deeper and I found it with Bill gave me the chance to meet You know what I’m saying? We try to about global warming and recycling and in Alabama as a tribute to the ongoing “The Times is Here” read signs tangled everywhere there was a black population. these artists and help them. They were bury it but it will always re-expose itself. revaluing things. The thing he is also civil-rights struggle. At one time, such up amongst the junk art and sandstone not only struggling to put food on the Heavier materials – like stone, concrete really interested in is how those materials African-American yard art could be sculptures. One of is visitors was George table but with what they were doing. with steel – don’t degrade, they just lie are affected by the world and by time.” found on a smaller scale across the South. King. “I went over there with a view to Many didn’t know what art was.” there and over time Mother Earth does Recycling is also central to the work Holley forages anywhere for including him in a film I had thought of ‘PRETTY The work Holley creates is part of a her thing. I’m like an archaeologist, a of . Best known for his material: construction sites, woods, making on the outsider art movement,” great tradition of recycling in African- humanitarian, and an inspector of how mixed-media assemblages, his abstract- gutters and landfills. In works he has he recalls. “But once I had met Lonnie MUCH ALL American art from the South. “Things humans build. I got a chance to not only expressionism has drawn comparisons to displayed at galleries you’ll find steel it was like, ‘Why look any further?’ people threw away or found. That’s how find out how things are made but also Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat. piping, broken chairs, shards of concrete Suddenly I realised I was making the MY LIFE I HAD all this found-object thing materialised,” about their endurance. I’ve never been The late Purvis Young is also known and glass, shoes and kitchen utensils, all wrong film. That’s what happened. I BEEN MAKING says William Arnett. “A piece of found to the pyramids but I could have a good among these artists. His Paintings from pieced together to create both figurative started filming Lonnie.” Another wood or machinery was used to make a discussion with professors in that field the Street used rough, uneven discarded and abstract imagery. Twisted roles of important visitor was William Arnett. THINGS’ sculpture because that’s all they had; on about deteriorating factors.” materials like scrap wood and cardboard electrical wire become curly locks of hair “When I finally found him, it was the other hand, they attributed meaning King has watched Lonnie develop a as a canvas for his painterly depictions of in No Place to Hide After Your Mother Has like a fan of the 15th century walking and symbolism to these things.” Arnett close understanding of the environment ghetto life and black history. There are You, while Along the Rails, an assemblage into the cathedral at Ghent for the first Finding Lonnie Holley was like a magic has traced these traditions of using found he works in over the years. “He’s always many others: Ralph Griffin, known for of wood and iron shards with coloured time and seeing the work of Van Eyck. wand that opened my eyes.” objects back to slavery. “Most of it began been fascinated with what’s around him,” his beautiful tree-root sculptures; the late paper, is suggestive of the blues. But It was like that, a real ‘eureka’ moment,” Holley helped Arnett in his search. in cemeteries,” he says. “They made little he says. “What’s around him is usually Nellie Mae Rowe, who made dolls from whether figurative or something more Arnett says. “I had started looking in the They travelled the South to uncover a monuments out of found materials and trash, streams nobody cares about, the fabric scraps, chewing gum and marbles; obscure, Holley’s work features political South for some visual art tradition that hidden chapter in art history. “He created a whole form of art that was ditches. It’s an urban environment, those or Ronald Lockett, the youngest, who and autobiographical observations on our hadn’t come to light. I was finding some became a partner in this,” says Arnett. symbolic and metaphoric.” little corners where a tree is trying to died of AIDS-related pneumonia in relationship to nature and technology. known folk artists but it wasn’t what I “We went around Alabama, Georgia, Holley’s use of found objects carries grow. Lonnie’s watched all those things 1998, aged just 33, leaving works like Holley is often labelled an “outsider was looking for. I knew there had to be North and South Carolina, Mississippi more meaning: “You learn about human carefully; in a way he’s like a scientist. The Inferior Man that Proved Hitler artist” but Arnett takes issue. “Outside more.” The beauty and depth of the art and Tennessee together and found lots habits, what we use in the process of He’s studied environmental issues like Wrong. Holley is also not unique in of what?” he says. “It’s a totally >

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Museum of Arts’ sculpture garden. Arthur Crenshaw’s filmThe Sandman’s Garden follows Holley as he pieces together the exhibition and provides a fascinating insight into his process. Lonnie Holley’s music is constructed in a similar way to his art. His half-sung spoken-word meditations are assembled from his experiences and observations. “He was always playing music,” recalls George King. “But he wasn’t playing for anyone, not his family or neighbours. He would use music to unwind. He would improvise, channelling whatever was on his mind.” The cassettes he recorded over the years languished in obscurity until Matt Arnett heard them while driving Watching Us Uprooted, 1997 Holley around. “I became more aware of his music in the 1990s when Lonnie and I were doing a lot of travelling together,” Last Door Left, 2000 he says. “He would often have a tape and Arthur Russell and Slim Harpo. There he’d put it on. What he was doing was are touches of these innovators in his Work for Food, very personal, singing about things in his avant-garde otherness and gritty blues 1997 exclusionary term. These things are not yard was bulldozed in 1997 during an life and what was going on in the world. aesthetic, but his music is very much his outside of anything, they are very much expansion of Birmingham International The production quality was, of course, own. Holley’s influences are the “mystery inside ancient traditions that precede Airport. “Condemning my property was hit and miss. What was unmistakable sounds” in the sci-fi films at the drive-in modernism; 20th-century western artists like them setting their dogs on me,” he was the haunting voice and the things theatres where he worked as a teenager. sticks on this ramshackle African blues. Lonnie down to record with her.” were largely influenced visits to so-called says. “I had built it up over 18 years and he was saying, which were as poignant Perhaps his most important influence is It’s a standout track dealing with Holley’s Reaching out to a younger generation ethnographic museums.” Even now, some they bulldozed around 30,000 pieces. If and important as what any of the great his own art. Just Before Music begins with issues with the church. “What I learned through his art and music, Lonnie in the art establishment reject Lonnie’s songwriters from any canon.” Holley’s stripped-back voice recounting in my life was so important that I wanted Holley is entering a new chapter of his art. “They say he is copying Duchamp or Matt Arnett became as determined the day he turned to art for salvation, in people to know,” he says. “I wanted to life he could only have dreamed of when whatever,” explains Arnett. “Lonnie is to expose Holley’s music as his dad had ‘Looking for All (All Rendered Truth)’. show there was something beyond God. he first turned his hand to art. “I think the late 20th-century incarnation of ‘I WANTED TO his art. After recording Lonnie’s first The events leading to that day he recalls And the churchmen, the pastors and Lonnie is happier now than he has been what black culture in the South has professional demos in a makeshift studio on ‘Fifth Child Burning’, a song based deacons, they all called me a sinner for a long time,” says George King. been about for hundreds of years: SHOW PEOPLE where he documented the disappearing on his very moving 1994 sculpture, made because of what I was trying to do.” “He’s in good spirits because he’s finally making these incredible metaphorical music of the region, Arnett set a small from the scorched possessions of a girl A recent New York Times feature getting appreciation.” Holley remains as works out of found materials that are THERE WAS invite-only show in his home. One of who died in a Birmingham house fire. followed Holley supporting Bill Callahan humble as when he first approached the totally abstract.” Holley sculpts, makes SOMETHING those invited was Lance Ledbetter of His second album, Keeping a Record of before a crowd that included members of galleries with his found-art assemblages assemblages, and paints, incorporating record company Dust-to-Digital. “That It (2013) featured Black Lips guitarist bands like Animal Collective. It is these 30 years ago. “The thing I would want on both figurative and abstract imagery. BEYOND GOD’ was my way of introducing Lonnie to Cole Alexander and Bradford Cox of associations that are helping Holley reach my tombstone is that I did my very best Like his stone sculptures, his paintings some people I knew,” says Arnett. Deerhunter. “They were both fans of the an audience he never anticipated when with what I had, to make the future often depict facial profiles made using “Lance and I had been talking about work Dust-to-Digital puts out and they first putting his thoughts to music. “His possible,” he says. “I’ve been in the cotton house paint, crayons, pens and chalk, I had work in the Metropolitan Museum various projects but when he heard also became very interested in the art,” whole ethos is about collaboration. He field, now I’m in the technical field.” often applied to discarded material. For and someone came in and destroyed it, Lonnie live, he said, ‘That is the project says Matt Arnett. “They knew Lonnie loves the idea of sharing what he does,” example, in 2003’s You Keep Me Under they would have gone to prison. But me we should do.’” Dust-to-Digital had had been recording; they came and met says Matt Arnett. “Just last night he Lonnie Holley’s Just Before Music is out Your Feet, lipstick is applied to a facial being a self-taught artist and black, no previously only released box sets of rare him and spent a day in the studio and it played alongside Lizzi Bougatsos from on Dust-to-Digital outline made of foam carpet padding. matter how sophisticated the art was, old music, so this was to be a new went from there.” Alexander and Cox Gang Gang Dance. It turns out she is George King’s documentary The Lonnie Despite the various exhibitions, the they still broke it up.” He was invited venture. Lonnie Holley’s first LP, co-wrote the title track and ‘From the working on a project at the Museum of Holley Story is in post-production authorities were oblivious to Holley’s to recreate his art yard for his biggest 2012’s Just Before Music, gained him Other Side of the Pulpit’, banging on Modern Art and had a recording session lonnieholley.com contribution to the community. His art exhibition yet, in 2004 in Birmingham comparisons to everyone from Sun Ra to dog cages, hitting cowbells and breaking booked in. She called me and invited georgeking-assoc.com

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