Holley began his artistic life in 1979 by carving tombstones for his sister’s two children, who had died in a house fire. He used blocks of a soft sandstone-like byproduct of metal casting, which he found discarded in piles by a foundry near his sister’s house. Holley believes that divine intervention led him to the material and inspired his artwork. Inspired similarly, he made other carvings and assembled them in his yard along with various found objects. This assemblage is a good example of that work, being composed of materials found along the railroad sidings, abandoned factories and other post-industrial sites in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Essentially, Holley incorporates natural and man-made objects, already imbued with cultural and artistic associations, into narrative sculptures that commemorate places, people, and events. These objects “speak” to Holley, unleashing his creative imagination. According to essayist Leslie Umberger, “Like many traditional practices and folkways, his work functions to keep people alive in his memory and map his own existence in relation to theirs. It is deeply autobiographical, but encompasses other planes—the conjoined stories of African Americans and all people born into legacies of struggle and oppression; personal history as American history.”
