Self-taught artist Lonnie Holley is known for using discarded objects to create meaningful art. “Lonnie Holley: If You Really Knew,” exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, focused on the artist’s improvisational turning of personal hardships into drawings, paintings, sculpture, photography, performance, and sound.
As one of 27 children, the 73-year-old artist spent time in foster care and in a juvenile detention facility. Holley focuses not on hardship, but on art, showing that anyone or anything can be greater than the sum of its parts. “Holley’s work is not just aesthetically compelling, but it also challenges viewers to rethink their relationships to objects, discarded items, and the environment,” MOCA curator Adeze Wilford explained to See Great Art.
The exhibition of sculpture, painting, and music included 70 works, including sculpture, drawings, and large-scale quilt paintings. Holley’s passion for inspiring social change through art has resulted in a body of work that explores US history, the environment, and his own memories. For the North Miami exhibition, Holley also curated a section dedicated to outsider artists Purvis Young, Thornton Dial, Mary T. Smith, and Hawkins Bowling. Although he is an Alabama native, it was Holley’s first retrospective in the South.
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