Born of struggle and a Dickensian childhood, Lonnie Holley's work is not Nashville's typical public art

A few months ago, a rock sat in the middle of a blink-and-you-miss-it strip of green space along Charlotte Avenue between 16th and 17th avenues. The rock's engraving called the green space a park, and said it was dedicated to the memory of artist William Edmondson, approximating his birth at about 1883, and his death in 1951. Edmondson, a sculptor, made playful, rounded carvings from sandstone; in 1937, he became the first African-American artist to be given a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many consider him the greatest artist ever to call Nashville home one reason his name now adorns one of the first parks in the city to focus primarily on commissioned public art.

Several weeks ago, a crew of landscapers and art handlers moved into block-long Edmondson Park, surrounding the marker with broken column relics from the Parthenon, laying down rubber track like a swirl of Yellow Brick Road, and adding small hills and shallow valleys throughout. On one side of the Edmondson marker now stands a jagged metal structure by acclaimed Alabama-based artist Thornton Dial. Nearby is Bell Buckle, Tenn., artist Sherri Warner Hunter's "The Gathering" three clay and tile mosaic figures, a bluebird resting peacefully on one's shoulders.

On the far corner of the green strip, directly in view of the Nashville skyline, is a spiny steel structure cradling a large boulder. The sculptor of this work is Lonnie Holley, and this is the first large-scale public work he has ever created. This blazing July afternoon, Holley eyes the giant sculpture he's created a 14-foot-tall piece whose three legs cross each other to create a teepee-like nest, as well as a shelter for a similar boulder beneath.

The shape is familiar to those who've visited the undeveloped lot in Atlanta that Holley treats as a studio a place he calls his "environment." But there, as here, it isn't what people are accustomed to thinking of as public art. Back home in Georgia, Holley says, suspicious neighbors have even wondered aloud whether he's performing voodoo.

The artist is quick to dismiss that charge with a gentle shrug, like someone who's dealt with prejudice and misunderstandings his whole life. But there's something to that accusation: Holley is indeed a kind of magician. Just maybe not the kind his neighbors or Nashvillians expect.

Driving Lonnie Holley around downtown Atlanta is like a quest with an extremely creative knight. At every corner is a potential story, hidden from most but clear as day to Holley, an expert at building something from nothing. As readily as a scrapyard Michelangelo, he picks apart pieces until he's left with a single sculptural relic that can distill a story to its essence.

"Pull over here," he says, and we stop in a recycling plant just around the corner from the Souls Grown Deep warehouse, the storage facility for the foundation that represents Holley. The plant is stacked high with colorful cardboard scraps that have been flattened and bundled together. They resemble either haybales or soft Mike Kelley sculptures, depending on your reference point. Holley's lies somewhere between.

"Look at this!" he exclaims, with a schoolteacher's earnest excitement. It's early May, and the sun shines so brightly on the stacks that Holley flips down his sunglasses, reflective aviators that he asks people to see themselves in when he's having a conversation. He finds an old issue of Life magazine commemorating the World Trade Center on its cover. It's in near-perfect condition.

Holley opens to a photo spread of Ground Zero soon after the 9/11 attacks. He holds it open in one hand with a few rusted metal parts and a flower he'd just picked tucked under his finger, and he asks me tells me, really, as if he has my best interest in mind to take a picture.

Just like that, Holley transforms trash into his own kind of art a no-frills spiritual exercise that's simple enough to take you by surprise, but might also make you rethink how you see things every day. Among the rusted detritus, sometimes there's a flower. Everything is personal in Holley's world.

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Born of struggle and a Dickensian childhood, Lonnie Holley's work is not Nashville's typical public art