Yielding to the Ancestors While Controlling the Hands of Time

Since the late 1970s Lonnie Holley has made paintings and sculptures from a wide array of discarded materials. His works are eclectic and encompassing and often carry the real-world narrative of the items he used to make them. Holley was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1950 and as a child knew only poverty and intense struggle. Yet struggle inspired a vision in which Holley saw the spiritual rewards of creating the very most with the very least. He came to see all castoff items as a containers of symbolism, meaning, and memory and one of his most reoccurring themes is paying tribute to those who went before him.

About Yielding to the Ancestors While Controlling the Hands of Time, Holley says: “The top head is the ancestor. It resembles a robot, representing the center of control of our thought. It rests on another head that continues life. . . . That head resembles an upside-down space capsule, for continuing exploration. The eyes are like YIELD signs turned upside-down. . . . We have to yield to the air we breathe. The mouth . . . represents the speaking of the truth. Below is a targetlike form. We are the targets in time. The hands of time are controlled by us. They are lifted in appreciation and praise.”