Holley documentary is a ‘Thumbs Up’ to an artist attuned to a cosmic muse

And why not? It was an honest mistake, given Holley’s daily communion with the divine, which informs his self-taught visual art and his otherworldly music. These cosmic allusions and funny stories swirling around the legendary artist are what Atlanta-based filmmaker George King worked to showcase in ”Thumbs Up for Mother Universe: Stories from the Life of Lonnie Holley,” a 95-minute feature that has racked up awards around the world, including Best Documentary at the Harlem International Film Festival and at the BronzeLens Film Festival, where it made its Atlanta debut.

“Everything I do is an offering to the spirits,” says the artist. “I tithe and give my 10% to the Great Spirit. That’s what George was trying to capture. And he did.”

Credit: Photo by William Arnett

Credit: Photo by William Arnett

Although Holley is touted as an avatar of the Black experience, his local events tend to be dominated by White fans — for every head with dreads or braids, there are 20 graying ponytails. Bedecked in chunky jewelry and looking the part of a shaman, Holley holds court and speaks in riddles. He comes across as both guileless and cagey. “It’s been a long journey to get to this point,” he reflects.

It was obvious King had his work cut out for him in making this film. Holley — who is now 75 and still churning out up to 25 projects a day at his studio in Atlanta — is a handful. The filmmaker followed his energetic subject around for 22 years through highs and lows, and the obsessiveness pays off in this soulful and comprehensive document about the improbable art-world superstar.

“I was researching a film on self-taught Southern artists in the 1990s and shot interviews with curators and collectors,” King says. “Lonnie was known to folklorists and artists in Atlanta. I arranged a visit. On meeting Lonnie, I realized he was the story, and we embarked on this journey that continues to this day. I haven’t since even looked at the other footage I shot before we met.”

Matt Arnett, who assists in booking Holley, says, “I think George King did an admirable job trying to capture the essence of Lonnie Holley on film. And I say that not as a knock, but the problem with any film about Lonnie Holley is it’s impossible to capture the spirit and do it justice in film. His life, his art and music-making are constant, and, often, the moment you say ‘Cut’ is when the magic happens. It’s impossible to be everywhere when and where something amazing is happening with Lonnie. Still, it’s a beautiful film — hopefully the first of many.”

If he has any antecedents, they are Sun Ra and Mr. Imagination, but Holley really is the ultimate sui generis success story. His picaresque biography starts, with great pain, in Birmingham, Alabama. Born the seventh of 27 children, he was swapped for a pint of whiskey, only to be raised in a juke joint as “Tunky MacIlroy,” unaware of his true identity. By age 5, Holley was put to work and wound up in the notorious Mount Meigs Industrial School for Negro Children, where he was sentenced to pick cotton. “I had my ass whupped every day at that place,” he says. “I didn’t know nothing about picking cotton, but I was expected to get 100 pounds a day. They about beat me to death.”

Credit: Courtesy of George King

Credit: Courtesy of George King

Despite these privations, Holley was a pensive young man with big ideas and a restless, almost compulsive, need to create.

In his 20s, with no formal training, Holley began carving “core sand” — an industrial byproduct of Birmingham’s blast furnaces — into visually arresting figures that caught the attention of a local television crew. The market for so-called “outsider art” was starting to boom, and, soon enough, Holley’s phantasmagoric work found its way to the Smithsonian. He became the toast of the art world.

But Mother Universe still had some tricks up her gossamer sleeve.

“He always sang while he worked . . . and he is always working,” King says. “I never thought his music would have any popular appeal. He would record at night as he lay in bed on a cassette recorder and keep them all. He had boxes of cassettes, but I doubt any survived an Alabama summer.”

Holley’s music, played largely and hauntingly on the black keys of his keyboard, defies easy categorization. Think of it as a free jazz fever dream — the sonic form of his indefatigable self-expression. “I realized he was telling his life story through music,” King says.

In 2012, Holley was dragged into a recording studio and, soon enough, found himself on a European tour. He recently played the Sydney Opera House in Australia, and he is gearing up for another trip to the continent.

Credit: Photo by Matt Arnett

Credit: Photo by Matt Arnett

Despite this success, Holley still regards himself as a knockabout bohemian on the ragged margins of society. “I don’t do any of this for the money,” he says at a March showing at the Tara before he takes the theater crowd to church, talking in the cadences of the Black pulpit about the importance of saving the environment and seeing beauty in that which is cast off.

“My mamaw wanted me to be a preacher,” he says. “My art is my message. My art is my healing, and I want to help others heal through it.”

In fact, even without the imprimatur of the art establishment — and even without the earnest, aging hipsters who hang on his every cryptic word — Holley would still be making art, as the documentary makes clear. He simply cannot help himself.

“He will make something that he hangs in the woods, where few people would stumble on it,” the late Atlanta outsider art patron and collector William Arnett says in ”Thumbs Up for Mother Universe.” “Or he’ll create something and toss it into a lake, presumably so archaeologists will find it in the future.”

Holley is taking his cues from a higher muse. “It’s like churning butter,” he says, pronouncing it “chewning.” “Churning butter for Mother Universe. I will do it no matter what. It makes me want to cry to think about it.”

FILM PREVIEW

“Thumbs Up for Mother Universe: Stories from the Life of Lonnie Holley”

Starting in June, the film is expected to be available for streaming from its official site, lonnieholleystory.com. Check the site for an additional Atlanta screening being planned. The documentary can be booked for educational screenings here.

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Candice Dyer’s work has appeared in magazines such as Atlanta, Garden and Gun, Men’s Journal and Country Living. She is the author of Street Singers, Soul Shakers, Rebels with a Cause: Music from Macon.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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