Ringing the Liberty Bell

I
1982 or 3, I think. A friend took me to the Sandman's house, a shack with dirt floor on a small hill overlooking the Birmingham airport. Junk everywhere, only it wasn't really junk: it was junk art. And there is a difference, though many folks didn't think so in those days.

I remember feeling the same way I did at 6 on a Ferris wheel: dizzy and delirious.

II
I had to talk Lonnie into selling me the first painting, his third. Completed in 1984, "In the Beginning God Created" reads from bottom to top: in the beginning, there was a woman with three wombs, Lonnie told me, and this is the blood from which we all come; the Old Kingdom was a beautiful, peaceful place; next are the profiles of all the peoples on the earth; above them, a vision of heaven; and finally, at the top, is the blood to which we all return.

I saw the painting (a slice of wall paneling, in fact) hanging in his house. I asked if it was for sale. He hesitated. We looked at other things. Then I asked again, as we stood at his door. I begged, I think. He finally said yes, and I came home with one of my favorite paintings. It greets me at the bottom of the steps every morning.

III
One Christmas, I took my niece and nephew with me to visit Lonnie. It was bitter cold and wet, so we welcomed his invitation to come inside. We gathered in a small room with one couch, space heater, keyboard, and one chair set in dirt. No one Lonnie's height could stand entirely erect, but none of us minded.

He showed us painting after painting after painting, telling us in colorful details the story of its making and meaning. I wanted them all. I bought three (over time, which he suggested) and he gave me a fourth. I bought the house where I live today because I could hang three large paintings on the dining room wall and see them every time I open the front door.

IV

Another time, I took an older friend to visit Lonnie. I watched him and I watched Lonnie surprising and delighting and puzzling him with his manic creative energy. Before we left, he made Al a small fish.

In the car, as we drove out the gate, Al said, "Good thing he found art. Otherwise, he might have killed himself or someone else." Al kept that fish on a reading table in his apartment until he died a decade later.

IV
For his 25-year retrospective in 2004, Lonnie asked to borrow two of my works: "In the Beginning God Created" and a little chicken he had spontaneously made for me on one of my visits. I missed those works for the year and a half they were gone, but I was pleased that he had asked for them. "Do We Think Too Much? I Don't Think We Can Ever Stop: Lonnie Holley, A Twenty-five Year Survey" showed at the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England.

V
In 2006, I last saw Lonnie at an art walk in Birmingham. My nephew, oldest great-niece, and I wandered into the children's area, and there he was at the welcome table. We hugged, we chatted, he bragged about me to my nephew, we laughed, and he inspired the children gathering under the Sandman's direction.

VI
Today, I did as I always do on Sunday: opened the New York Times website to the magazine section, and there he was: "Lonnie Holley, the Insider's Outsider." This writer has done a fine job of capturing Lonnie's essence as artist or, as the writer calls him, performance artist. Everything Lonnie does is inspirited with energy and "truth." He makes everything beautiful. Including the lives of those he meets.

All Rendered Truth (Lonnie Holley/George King) from George King on Vimeo.

VII

In my lifetime I have been fortunate to know many fascinating and brilliant people, but I have known only one genius: the ringer of the liberty bell.