Lonnie Holley holds court at Afropunk Atlanta
Outsider art icon garners his largest black audience at a music festival in transition
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No value assigned"This is the most African-Americans that have seen my art at one time," Lonnie Holley told a young man Saturday at the first Atlanta incarnation of Afropunk. Billed as the Carnival of Consciousness, the festival's two music stages at 787 Windsor were separated by a maze of fresh-painted murals, black-lit canvases, food trucks, and vendors with African-inspired wares. In an old abandoned-looking warehouse sat the makeshift studio and gallery where Holley, an outsider-art legend among those in the know, sat by his works giving impromptu artist talks that echoed off the tin walls like sermonettes. The dirt floors reflected his Alabama roots more than the white-walled galleries that regularly exhibit his work today. And Holley seemed equally inspired by the continuous stream of young black creatives introduced for the first time to his work.
"This festival, I really love what they’ve got going on here," Holley said as a crowd slowly gathered around him. "The main thing is they’re trying to bring people a plate of identity. I love it. Should I say a bowl of identity? Or should I say identity gumbo?" A young woman laughs and Holley responds. "You love identity gumbo don’t you? I love identity gumbo, too. See that’s my thing. I just said that. Nobody has said ‘identity gumbo’ before. We’re gonna see how far that goes when you post it."
No value assignedBorn the seventh of 27 children in Birmingham, Alabama, Holley's childhood was shaped by alcoholic foster parents and abusive state custody. That was before his handmade works garnered the attention of the art world, catapulting him into near-mythic folk status over the last couple of decades. But to a rising generation of African-Americans appreciators of art his outsider aesthetic is rarely exposed. While Afropunk's mainstreaming has garnered criticism in recent years from longtime attendees who increasingly view it as Afrocentricity fashioned for Generation Instagram, the festival seems to relish its new role as cultural indoctrinator.
And for Atlanta's first successful Afropunk fest, situated in the middle of Mechanicsville, Holley provided the perfect intergenerational inspiration.
"With identity gumbo, all brains matter," he said. "But we gotta be able to see that every brain matters. If I’m saying 50,000-years' worth of preservation, I’m looking for 50,000-years' of new brains to get the same treatment, the same education — I mean, everybody should now, especially now. If this is going to become the mecca of education here in the South. If we’re gong to show people what we’re working with, what I’m telling the children that you can do by any means necessary as Malcolm say, not a weapon, let our art become the weapon.
"You don’t have to throw no brick at nobody. Paint the brick."
Behind him an abstract amalgamation of found objects hulked. Cotton picked from Selma, Alabama blossomed from empty corn husks. Shattered glass shook like a rattle inside an old baby bottle. All of it trash, sculpted into a slaveship of repurposed treasure.
"Look at that ship I made out of trash," Holley pointed. "I made a ship out of it, call it a slaveship of trash. Not that the slaves that was on there was trash; but the ship itself. Can you dig where I’m coming from?"
No value assignedFestival-goers gathered around him like students — most of them looked like they were — as Holley spun together Biblical scripture and his Cold Titty Mama (CTM) techno-critiques into a manifesto of creative resistance.
"Are we allowing Cold Titty Mama to control us? Now, people don’t even have to go out of their house. They can order online. And the next thing they know they’re getting a package delivered at their door. So Cold Titty Mama — what I call computer technology management — is not only controlling, it’s demanding our attention. And we’re not even breaking away from it. We’re getting to a point where now it is total distraction. You’re too busy arguing with your sister or brother or somebody you don’t like no more, and you ain’t paying attention to what’s going on in life around you.
"We’re supposed to be staying focused. We’re supposed to be paying attention to what the Bible say: 'Fret not because of something somebody say about me. I’m in the process of learning, keep focused. Everything here I had to stay focused on it.'"
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