The genesis of this group of collages began when Holley noticed a piece of old plywood in the studio during a visit to Paulson Fontaine Press. Lonnie grabbed our jigsaw and started cutting out figures, exposing his predilection for nested and overlapping human forms, chambered nautiluses of ancestry, community, and the promises of a future within the past.

Paul Arnett writes, “Within this process, Holley references his art-making roots: woodblock prints were made from jigsawed plywood forms pieced together into a single wood “plate.” (Holley’s original outdoor art environment, constructed in the 1980s and ’90s in Birmingham, was ringed by cutout wooden forms much like these.) With these understatedly autobiographical prints, he has reimagined a staple of yard art—the plywood cutout—as the basis for a distinctly fine-art medium—the print—while referencing an ancient civilization that existed (like American music) at the boundary of Europe and Africa.”

Born in Alabama, Lonnie Holley is an internationally renowned artist and performer whose three-decade-long career has encompassed drawing, painting, sculpture, and music. Holley’s paintings, found-object sculptures and environments are made of both natural and manmade elements. The densely constructed pieces reference current events and African American history and, like his musical lyrics, refer to slavery, the church, and universal ecology. Holley’s work is included in numerous museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia Museum of Art; New Orleans Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. He is represented by the James Fuentes Gallery, NY.