Curator, Daniel Fuller, discusses Lonnie Holley’s solo exhibition, I Snuck Off the Slave Ship.

Bio

Lonnie Holley

Holley is a man of many myths and talents. Born in Jim Crow-era Birmingham, Alabama, as the seventh of 27 children, Holley traveled across the South and held a wide array of jobs (grave digger, cotton picker, and short-order cook at Disney World) before making his first artwork at the age of 29. Self taught, he started carving sculptures from sandstone and then settled on his preferred material: found objects. Holley has made totemic sculptures from items such as steel scrap, plastic flowers, melted televisions, defunct machines, and crosses.

Holley was included in the seminal exhibition More than Land and Sky: Art From Appalachia at the National Museum of American Art in 1981. In 2013 The Whitney Museum, NY, most recently hosted Holley’s debut New York performance concurrent to the museum’s Blues for Smoke exhibition. His work is included in museum collections, including; Smithsonian American Museum of Art, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; and the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY. Holley has also gained recognition for his music, and he has collaborated with the indie-rock bands Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective.


Upcoming Events

March 28 / 6:00pm
Opening

Stacks Squares Opening

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Join us for the opening of Corner Office, an exhibition with Stacks Squares in Contemporary On-Site.

March 28 / 6:30pm
Contemporary Talks

Villa Albertine Resident Artist Talk

Ngnima Sarr (aka T.I.E)

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Ngnima Sarr (aka T.I.E) will discuss her project “Odyssey in Utero”, where she explores diasporic and existential questions through the perspective of the female body.

March 30 / 12:30pm
Contemporary Talks

Atlanta for Artists

A Conversation

Presented by Artadia
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Discuss the ever-evolving Atlanta arts ecosystem and how we can further encourage it to thrive.

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