By JA Jones, Editor

SAINT PETERSBURG—You have until September 15th to come to MFA St. Pete to see the works of the great Lonnie Holley, a multidisciplinary artist whose otherworldly pieces will touch you to your core and stay with you.

In the exhibition of the Museum of Fine Arts Never the same song, Holley’s work is combined with the work of artist Lizzi Bougatsos. Holley and Bougatsos met a decade ago and have continued their connection. Some of the work in the exhibition was created by both in Holley’s studio. Both artists use found and repurposed objects in their visual creation. Both are improvisational musicians committed to environmentalism and social justice. Both use film documentation of their work to expand their stories.

Carefully Rewired (2024)

The fire left an indelible mark on both of their lives.

Selected pieces of Holley’s transdimensional mastery tell an epic journey from a chaotic, stolen childhood – the seventh of 27 children, he was separated from his family at age 12 and placed in the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, a documentary horror house. (The Peabody Award-nominated podcast “Unreformed: the Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children,” by author Josie Duffy Rice, covers the story and the abuse.)

His journey from this forest of turmoil to the family tragedy that led him to a life of art illustrates a distinctly African-American process of transformation leading to “Afrofuturist” creative production.

Lonnie Holley – “Everything came true” (youtube.com)

Holley’s sculptures, assemblages, and paintings in various media address themes such as family, the environment, racial trauma, and technology. At once violent, whimsical, angry, and transcendent, his works are captivating in their ability to express danger and beauty from the found elements he weaves into works large and small.

“Lonnie Holley is the closest thing America has to a prophet.” – San Francisco Weekly.

The piece, made from scrap metal, wood, electrical cables, nails and electrical components, revisits Holley’s family history “Carefully rewired.” From the description card: “The 1979 fire that killed 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 refers to the warning of African-American spiritualists that the destruction of the world will not be by water, as in Noah’s day, but ‘next time by fire.'”

In the Grip of Power – Lonnie Holley – YouTube

Waterline (Made in America) (2020)

His environmental works include the piece “water pipe”, In it, “Holley imagines a future in which New York City sinks beneath rising sea levels due to its own harmful behavior. The Statue of Liberty souvenir symbolizes the pervasive global tourism culture and the incessant consumerism it promotes.” The description also notes the use of copper to illustrate the relentless exploitation of resources mined in other countries.

Holley’s sculpture, “Baby in Control,” features a child’s rocking chair wrapped in wires, metals and plastic. In a nod to the vulnerability of childhood, the description says Holley calls technology “computer technology management or cold titty mama” — and combines joysticks in the sculpture. The card also mentions Holley’s environmental concerns about discarded metals and plastic harming children and the environment.

Holley talks about his work and the meaning of “I Snuck Off The Slave Ship”: Short Film Competition: I Snuck Off The Slave Ship (youtube.com)

You can see Holley’s performance in the atmospheric and mystical accompanying video, “I SNUCK OFF THE SLAVE SHIP” – and it’s hard not to watch multiple times as the short film plays, which features Holley and community members in various scenes of celebration, remembrance, and intergenerational togetherness. Holley’s uniquely haunting voice, as he improvises plucking piano chords with ring-adorned, ornate fingers, adds an extra layer of mojo.

Baby Under Control (1995)

Lonnie Holley – I Woke Up… (Official Video) (youtube.com)

Now in his 70s, Holley is a world-renowned artist whose work can be found in major collections including the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, among many others. His work is also on permanent display at the United Nations and in the White House Rose Garden. His photographs include Shortly before the music (2012), Keep records of (2013), MITH (2018), National Freedom (2020), Broken Mirror: A Selfie ReflectionAnd Oh me, oh my god (2023).

Holley’s work is part of the Souls Grown Deep collection. From the website: The Souls Grown Deep Collection includes 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 collection is particularly rich in works from the period from the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. through the late twentieth century. The roots of these works can be traced to slave cemeteries and remote forests. After the Civil War, as the South’s agricultural economy collapsed and African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers from rural areas were forced to move to major urban centers for survival—particularly in and around Birmingham, Alabama, where iron and steel production provided jobs—a new and more public language of quilts, funerary art, and garden art emerged. In addition to painting, sculpture, assemblage, drawing, and textile making, this tradition also included music, dance, oral literature, informal theater, culinary arts, and more. Similar to jazz musicians, artists in this tradition reflect the rich, symbolic world of the black rural South through highly charged works that address a wide range of insightful social and political issues.

For more information about Lonnie Holley, visit https://www.lonnieholley.com.

A film production about his life: https://lonnieholleystory.com.

For information about Never the Same Song at MFA St. Pete, visit https://mfastpete.org/exh/lizzi-bougatsos-lonnie-holley/

The 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 the end of August – see it this weekend during the Art Walk!

Give us the sunis a solo exhibition of artwork by artist Traci Mims. The exhibition runs through August and includes drawings, prints, paintings, and quilts by the Atlanta-based artist.

Mims is from St. Petersburg and returns to the city with Give us the sun She earned her BA from Florida A&M University and her MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and has received numerous awards, grants, and exhibitions.

Mims is a multidisciplinary artist whose work often focuses on the stories, lives, faces and characters of the people in her community, as well as epic characters 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 emotionally respond to them.”

Her meticulous prints and monumental drawings address social justice and illuminate histories that are increasingly threatened with erasure. Mims combines the everyday and the monumental, both thematically and stylistically, giving each work 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.

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