Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt illuminates the artistic process of Lonnie Holley, a self-taught African American visual artist and musical performer from Birmingham, Alabama.
Lonnie creates constantly. He sketches faces on napkins in restaurants, pastes together collages in notebooks while riding from one show to the next. He carves sculptures from soap pilfered from motel bathrooms. A walk with him is to stop and start, as he collects items along his path, as he examines all manner of detritus in the man-made and natural environment. Every object, every piece of trash, junk, and garbage, is a source for creation.
Filmed with minimal interviews, Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt is a verite portrait of a man who sees beauty in what others step on, step over, and leave behind. It is a portrait of an artist who creates art from objects and materials infused with history and memory.