By J.A. Jones, Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG — You have until September 15 to get to MFA St. Pete to see works by the great Lonnie Holley, a multidisciplinary artist whose otherworldly pieces strike you to the bone and stay with you.
In the Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition Never the Same Song, Holley’s work is paired with the work of artist Lizzi Bougatsos. Holley and Bougatsos met a decade ago and have continued their connection, with some of the work in the show created by both at Holley’s studio. Both artists use found and repurposed objects in their visual creations; both are improvisational musicians concerned with environmental protection and social justice. Both use film documentation of their work to expand their storytelling.
Cautiously Rewired (2024)
Both of their lives were indelibly marked by fire.
Select pieces of Holley’s trans-dimensional mastery deliver an epic journey from a chaotic, stolen childhood — as the seventh child of 27, he was taken from his family at the age of 12 and enrolled in Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, a documented house of horror. (Writer Josie Duffy Rice’s Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed: the Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children” covers the history and abuse.)
His path from that forest of tumult to the family tragedy ushering him into a life of art illustrates a distinctly Black American process of transmutation that results in “afro-futurist” creative production.
Lonnie Holley – “All Rendered Truth” (youtube.com)
Holley’s mixed-media sculptures, assemblages, and paintings study themes on family, the environment, racial trauma, and technology. His works manage to feel violent, whimsical, enraged, and transcendent all at once, gripping in their ability to express danger and beauty out of the found elements he weaves into works both large and small.
“Lonnie Holley is the closest thing America has to a prophet.” – San Francisco Weekly.
Crafted of scrap metal, wood, electrical wire, nails, and electrical components, Holley’s family history is revisited in the piece “Cautiously Rewired.” From the description card: “The 1979 fire that took the lives of Holley’s niece and nephew was caused by faulty electrical wiring. A decade later, Holley lost another young relative, also in an electrical fire. In Cautiously Rewired Holley explores the power and danger of electricity and fire…[he] also frequently references the African American Spiritual warning that the destruction of the world won’t come from water, as in Noah’s day, but by “fire next time.’”
In the Grip of Power – Lonnie Holley – YouTube
Water Line (Made In America) (2020)
Among his environmental works is the piece “Water Line”, in which “Holley envisions a future where New York City is submerged under a rising sea level due to its own detrimental behaviors. The Statue of Liberty souvenir symbolizes the pervasive global tourism culture and the incessant consumerism it fosters.” The description also notes the use of copper to explore the relentless exploitation of resources mined from foreign nations.
Holley’s “Baby in Control” sculpture centers a child’s rocking chair bound in wires, metals, and plastic. Referencing the vulnerability of childhood, the description notes that Holley calls the technology “computer technology management, or Cold Titty Mama” – and combines joysticks in the sculpture. The card also notes Holley’s environmental concern regarding the cast-off metals and plastics that cause harm to children and the environment.
Holley discusses his work and the meaning of “I Snuck off the Slave Ship”: Shorts Competition: I Snuck Off The Slave Ship (youtube.com)
You can watch Holley perform in the atmospheric and mystical accompanying video, “I SNUCK OFF THE SLAVE SHIP” – and it’s hard not to sit through multiple viewings of the short film, which captures Holley and community members in various scenes of celebration, remembrance, and intergenerational communion. Holley’s singularly haunting voice as he improvisationally plucks out piano chords with ring-bedecked, art-chiseled fingers lends another layer of mojo.
Baby in Control (1995)
Lonnie Holley – I Woke Up… (Official Video) (youtube.com)
Over 70 now, Holley is a world-renown artist whose work is in collections of major, including The Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and many others; his works are also permanently displayed in the United Nations and the White House Rose Garden. Recordings include Just Before Music (2012), Keeping a Record of It (2013), MITH (2018), National Freedom (2020), Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection, and Oh Me Oh My (2023).
Holley’s work is part of the Souls Grown Deep Collection. From the website: The Souls Grown Deep Collection contains nearly 1,000 works by more than 160 artists from the African American South, two-thirds of whom are women. Ranging from large-scale assemblages to works on paper, the Foundation is particularly strong in works dating from the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the end of the twentieth century. The roots of these works can be traced to slave cemeteries and secluded woods. Following the Civil War, when the southern agrarian economy collapsed, and rural African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers were forced to migrate for survival to major population centers—particularly in and around Birmingham, Alabama, where iron and steel production created jobs—a new and more public language of quilts, funerary, and yard arts arose. Beyond painting, sculpture, assemblage, drawing, and textile-making, this tradition also included music, dance, oral literature, informal theater, culinary arts, and more. Much like jazz musicians, the artists of this tradition reflect the rich, symbolic world of the black rural South through highly charged works that address a wide range of revelatory social and political subjects.
For more information on Lonnie Holley, visit https://www.lonnieholley.com.
A film production about his life: https://lonnieholleystory.com.
For information on Never the Same Song at MFA St. Pete, visit https://mfastpete.org/exh/lizzi-bougatsos-lonnie-holley/
Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg is located at 255 Beach Dr. NE St. Petersburg, FL 33701. Phone: (727) 896-2667.
TRACI MIMS: GIVE US THE SUN on view through August — see it this weekend during the Art Walk!
Give Us the Sun, is a solo exhibition of artwork by artist Traci Mims. On view through August, the exhibition features drawings, prints, paintings, and quilt work by the Atlanta-based artist.
A native of St. Petersburg, Mims returns to the city with Give Us the Sun having earned her BA from Florida A&M University, her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and numerous awards, fellowships, and exhibitions.
Mims is a multidisciplinary artist whose work often spotlights the narratives, lives, faces, and figures of the individuals in her community as well as epic individuals and stories. “I consider myself a social realist,” she says, “because I focus on the lives of everyday Black people, the things they experience, and how they react to it emotionally.”
Her meticulous print work and monumental drawings center social justice and illuminate histories that are increasingly under threat of erasure. Mims combines the everyday and monumental, both in subject matter and style, making each piece its own poignant expression.
The Woodson Museum of Florida is located at 2240 9th Ave S, Saint Petersburg, FL, United States, Florida, (727) 323-1104, Visit https://woodsonmuseum.org for more information.
