Is it possible for you to get work done during these turbulent and unsettling times? 

Yes, it's possible, because I think I was conditioned to make art and music out of difficult situations. So what's happening now, for me, just provides information and content to create from. 

How long have you been making art?

I learned the word art in 1981, a few years after I started carving industrial sandstones after the death of my niece and nephew. Someone said what I was doing was "art." But I've been making things my whole life, I just didn't call it anything. It was a fire chief who first called what I was doing art. I didn't know what art was.

How does music influence your current everyday thinking? 

Music has always been like a dose of medicine for me. What the musicians were prescribing helped us all get better. 

What is the key source or inspirational core of your musical performances?

The key source is knowing that there is so much history behind what I'm trying to say. Music is a universal key or combination that can open any lock. I made art for a long time but it feels like once people heard my music, they better understood what I was trying to say with my art. They grew to understand better what I was saying. And that motivated me.  

How do you keep a balance between your musical performances and your art making?

They're the same. I've said many times that they are like Siamese Twins, coming from the same brain. I leave it to other people to judge or separate them. For me, it's the same thing coming out of the same brain or ocean of thought. Sometimes I may be sitting at my keyboard and other times I may be standing in a field of debris and have to dive a little deeper.

How have your art works evolved in the past few years? Always pushing ideas and materials to the edge?

I don't think the subject matter has evolved that much. I've been saying a lot of the same things I'm saying now for many years. It just seems like now people are starting to recognize and hear and see what I've been trying to tell them. One thing that has changed some over the years, is my materials. Because I make art out of other people's discarded and unwanted materials, I have had to respond to their wasteful ways. 

Do you have a set of go-to platforms to begin an art work or is it a bespoke situation each time you begin a creative adventure?

It is us that are causing all of these problems on our Mothership. I respond to materials and to my ideas which means each piece of art I create or any song I sing is in hope of understanding. I don't have any certain plan about a song or a piece of art until I encounter the material or the idea that needs to have a voice. 

What was the underling story of your recent New York gallery exhibition?

I was in a show that was curated by Matt and Paul Arnett, from works in their father William Arnett's collection. Over the years this human's brain was interested in showing America a hidden part of America's art. Bill was the first person to show me serious concern of what I was working with and for. He exhibited great understanding with what he had collected, preserved, and saved, at a time when I was crying about so much art being destroyed. This exhibition, which also included my friends Thornton Dial, Joe Minter, Ronald Lockett, Purvis Young, Mary T. Smith, Joe Light, James "Son" Thomas, and quilts by a number of women from around the South, was organized as a tribute to Bill's outstanding support for all of us and more. 

Which other artists do you find kinship with?

Anybody that is loyal to their output. Many who make art and music. I mentioned just a few of them in my last answer.  

What do you do during your “down time?"

I don't have down time. Unless I'm dreaming. But most of the time just processing the dreams turns into a work of art. Even within that, I'm still thoughtsmithing.

about lonnie holley

Lonnie Holley was born in 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama. From the age of five, Holley worked various jobs: picking up trash at a drive-in movie theatre, washing dishes, and cooking. He lived in a whiskey house, on the state fairgrounds, and in several foster homes. His early life was chaotic and Holley was never afforded the pleasure of a real childhood.

Since 1979, Holley has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity. His art and music, born out of struggle, hardship, but perhaps more importantly, out of furious curiosity and biological necessity, has manifested itself in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and sound. Holley’s sculptures are constructed from found materials in the oldest tradition of African American sculpture. Objects, already imbued with cultural and artistic metaphor, are combined into narrative sculptures that commemorate places, people, and events. His work is now in collections of major museums throughout the country, on permanent display in the United Nations, and been displayed in the White House Rose Garden.