Black in the Midst of the Red White and Blue, 2017 by Lonnie Holley

Lonnie Holley is an extraordinary self-taught artist and musician whose expressive work transforms discarded materials into profound cultural statements. Born in Jim Crow-era Birmingham, Alabama, Holley worked a vast array of jobs across the South before beginning his artistic journey at age 29. He is renowned for his evocative, totemic sculptures fashioned from salvaged materials—including steel scrap, defunct machinery, and repurposed everyday objects. Now collected by major institutions like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Holley has also earned acclaim for his improvisational music, collaborating with top indie acts like Animal Collective and Dirty Projectors.

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SOBU is proud to feature fine art prints created by our friends at Paulson Fontaine Press, a woman- and minority-owned publisher based in Berkeley, California. Founded in 1996, the press collaborates with visionary artists—including Kerry James Marshall, Martin Puryear, Tauba Auerbach, and the Quilters of Gee’s Bend—to produce exceptional limited-edition intaglio etchings. Grounded in a commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices, particularly Black artists, Paulson Fontaine Press creates works that are held in major institution collections nationwide, including MoMA, the Whitney, the National Gallery of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.