 Welcome to Senior Moments here. Here we're at the Norwich campus today. We're going to be doing a very interesting program called the Norwich University School of Architect and Art and Phyllis Kornfeldt is going to be doing a whole program on prisoner art And she's going to get introduced and we'll hopefully have a nice audience here to listen to our great presentation Everyone to Norwich University School of Architecture and Art Lecture series We were welcoming here today Phyllis Kornfeldt who present her artwork as well as her work entitled cell block visions prison art in America She attended the university the arts in philadelphia and focus on art education Kornfeldt taught her art in the variety of settings ranging from grade school to junior college and teaching community art classes It wasn't until 1983 that Kornfeldt found her true calling after applying to teach art to prisoners She was hired to teach at three Oklahoma State Petitenturies and quickly recognized the talent these prisoners harbor They used unconventional ways to create an image and did so with limited supplies in our education Please give a warm welcome to Phyllis Kornfeldt Thanks, everybody. It's been great fun to be here so far. I appreciate the school Thank you to the art and architecture department. I enjoyed very much my visit to arts class That was great and um, so i'm glad to be here. I've been doing this work for 36 years I'm not showing any of my own work. I think Nadine said I would be but I'm just going to start from the beginning. Um, my degrees are in art education And I spent some one year each in grade school. Can you hear me all right? Everybody good Okay One year in grade school one year in middle school one year in high school one year in junior college, and I was not happy I think mostly because it wasn't it was never really truly about the art There was so much else going on and then in 1983 there was actually federal money For artists to work in the correctional facilities in the state So I heard there was an opening for a painting and drawing teacher and I was thrilled because it sounded like big time adventure, which it was and still is unpredictable Which it was and still is and very very satisfying the people that I have met who are incarcerated are As a whole very impressive Beautiful people So you'll see from the artwork. I'll tell you a bit about some of the some of the folks And what I what I found One of the first prisons I went to was Joseph Hart Correctional Center. This is in Lexington, Oklahoma medium security men's prison What I remember most about it was the year that I arrived and I I was there for six years in Oklahoma The year I arrived there was a new Wharton and his name is Jack Cowley and he was so into so folks so behind Offering creative opportunities for the men in the prison That he found room On the campus the the prisons in Oklahoma were pretty much like ranch houses one story very spread out big compound He he he told me that First of all, he opened a leatherworking studio a painting studio And a ceramic studio. He said the reason he he's so behind it He said when it's something like when a man makes art He looks cleaner. He walks straighter. He says good morning to people And so I have seen the same Change many times in people who have created beauty about 10 men were Signed up for the first class. There had not been an art program in the Joseph Hart for about I think they told me 20 years something like that 10 men came in two of them with their arms loaded With drawings this this man this artist was um Braulio Diaz He had about 60 drawings in his arms that he had done He showed me a few short colored pencils and a ballpoint pen He had been working on paper that he got from the trash like the backs of inmate request forms and old calendars So here I was I hadn't been taking art lessons since I was about six years old Plus studying art history besides studio art A lot of my friends were artists and suddenly I was seeing art that was completely different Than anything I had seen So I knew right away that my job there was not to teach In the conventional ways that I had been taught But rather to aim for the source that he came from And aim for that source in each person and that's what I that's what I've been doing all along And you'll see how the art is quite off the maps in a way This is also braulio Diaz envelope art is a traditional art form in prison Because you can first of all always buy envelopes in the commissary And secondly, it's a it's a way to give to your family. It's very important in prison They have found many statistics that the Closer contact closer in contact inmates are with their family and their communities while they're on the inside The less likely they are to reoffend So it really cuts down on recidivism to find ways For the incarcerated people to connect with their their people on the outside The thing one of the amazing about Diaz. So he had been in about 15 16 years He didn't have a job. He didn't have visitors. He didn't speak English And he's he spent all those years pretty much in his cell So what struck me was that the sweetness Of his work the sweetness The beauty the good feeling the lack of Suffering on his part lack of victimization Not to mention the inventiveness The I came to see very Very early on that almost everyone in prison is making art art is big time People are in their living Rather their commissary all the way through their sentence if they can do any drawing This was in Oklahoma I doubt there's any prison or jail in the country now where people are free to paint On the walls of their cells, but at this time they were So you can see you can see how important art is even in this cell An earlier inhabitant Painted the tiger someone else moved in and put a sticker in the tiger's mouth which says jesus loves you Somewhat mitigating the ferocity of the tiger And then you see a painting there which represents the feeling of martyrdom Being a martyr to their lives And then on the tv set is a multi frame stand Frame the art of making frames is big time in prison Because you can imagine if you're away from the people that you care about The snapshots that come in Are almost sacred And so People have been making frames out of anything they can get their hands on in this case These were made from the pebbles in the prison yard Jack Callie moved to another prison while I was still working in the system And in this case he opened up a whole section of the prison That was deemed to be uninhabitable But he opened it up for people to have studios craft studios and painting studios And I thought it was interesting to see what this one person had to work with in the beginning Of him of his creating his painting studio Not very Artful is it? And these two men have been have set up already and they're sharing one of these cells To do their artwork So here these two brothers are making frames and it's big business in a way the Marketplace is thriving. They made their frames by They had an armature first. You can see the cardboard stars Then they then the frames were made from rolling paper up tightly dipping it in paint to get a marbleized effect and And also they got scraps of fabric from the prison industry, which in that case was an upholstery shop This frame is made from toothpicks And the center panel is made from the cross-section of toothpicks so The marketplace as I said is thriving And this one person told me he said When guys here that you can do something be it a carving painting poems, whatever They start bugging you to do something for them Once being facetious I told a guy who requested a carving that there were 90 guys on the list ahead of him He replied I don't care at least I'm on the list And I've seen evidence of this in many of my classes where the Artists are being pursued By the other folks in order to get them to do work for them So can you guess what this is made from? Potato chip bags This this method of paper weaving people tell me they learned it as children in summer camp I still don't know how to do it but I consider it at one of the folk arts in prison and it It can be defined as a folk art because it is made with materials that are at hand And the skills are passed down not from generation to generation but from cell mate to cell mate So there's a lot of work being done with this kind of paper weaving. This is potato chips Potato chip bags So the artist went around the cell block and asked people not to throw away their potato chip bags Turned them inside out Washed them and tore them into strips and did this weaving The pom poms on the baby shoes are made from the colored bands of Sports socks they unwrapped the threads of the sports ox to make the pom poms These baby shoes are immensely popular I I brought a pair with me by the way after the talk You're very much invited to come and look at some of the Actual artwork that I brought with me I included the ramen noodle wrapper so that you can see the care with which the artist repeated the logo There's this full concern about beauty and care that I see all the time The ones that I brought over if you look on the inside lining you can see pasta with tomato sauce on it You can see the repeated pattern of the pasta and tomato sauce And also I I want to say that the men and women who are making this art are very They're very serious about their mediums And just to give you an example I walked past a conversation not too long ago Where this one man was talking to another man and he said He was ruining the fact that there were no longer eagle brand potato chips in the commissary And therefore he lost a lot of his palate He was saying the eagle brand potato chips are no longer available in this prison Maybe they have them on the streets. I don't know It had a beach scene on the front So you had your tan from the sand your blue and white from the water with the waves And a big red and white beach umbrella I saved them for four months to do a jewelry box and a co correctional officer Come sweeping through and says you can't have this and he tossed them These purses are amazing. I haven't seen any recently. This is made from 450 packs of cool cigarettes It had it exuded a An aroma for the first few years that I had of cigarettes And it's it's stabilized by using dental floss To go in and out of the weaving to keep it stable and I brought one of these purses With me today. This was made by a man named Leland Dodd Who is serving life without possibility of parole for conspiracy to traffic in marijuana And this is in Oklahoma probably 30 years ago This is another folk art The work that i'm showing you now is pre art program This is this is work that everybody in every prison Is doing it seems to be very crucial to a person's self-respect or To remind myself that i'm a human being that I can create this which has no function other than to be beautiful These soap carving some places have stopped Allowing that and giving the The incarcerated people liquid soap because there are some tales about making the floor slippery so that when a correctional officer comes in They will they will slip and fall and There are all kinds of excuses and reasons to take take away Possibilities from the people who are incarcerated Not everywhere not all the time envelope art as I said is very popular and commercially Very significant Mostly there there's a very short list of images that are popular and you're seeing them right here These are the envelopes of a an envelope maker artist The way it works is in prison the People there don't have money in their hands So they have an account with the commissary So maybe this man charges say a six pack of Pepsi for an envelope And the buyer goes to his or her commissary account gets the Pepsi hands it over to the artist and receives the artwork So these are the most popular images hearts flowers and the Symbols of their country that they come from I think the frog is from Puerto Rico. I'm not sure anybody, you know Okay The kind of companion art form to envelope art is handkerchief art I brought one of those here you can get in in prisons where there's no art paper They can't buy any art materials the commissaries have these beautiful cotton 16 inch square Hackerchiefs and they're they make a very good surface for acrylic paint ballpoint pen and color pencils and this This particular one is expressing this the Other advantage of him envelope of a hackerchief art is that you can fold it up and send it home in an envelope So this is very important for this man to send to his girlfriend and you see again The hearts and roses in addition to the religious symbolism Now when I knew I was going to work in prison I figured all the art I would see would be biker art tattoo imagery and then maybe some portraits of famous people and I do see a lot of that And uh, this is an example. This is by George Dyson who was in my program for many years and he he made these He also made drawings and paintings But this is kind of what I expected a biker style Of artwork and it's just ballpoint pen on the handkerchief One thing he told me Um, it's it's very important that when one person is making art in prison. It doesn't stop there Because it has impact on the staff On their peers and then of course when they send them home, there's impact on their families and their communities So one thing that George told me he said he said the CEOs think we're less than they are They get surprised when they see the work. They see us in a different light They say hey, you got talent So this is the most popular uh art That a person can make The family sends in a picture of a new baby The artist or or the artist's customer Turns it over and asks for an enlargement of the snapshot In this case They requested that just the baby be be in the drawing and this is done on a handkerchief So When the drawing is finished the drawing is sent home The family frames it and hangs it in the living room wall takes a picture Of it hanging framed on the living room wall and sends that back inside To the person who sent it to them So you can see again the connection If you're locked away for 15 years 20 years and you want to stay in touch Imagine what what will you write? What will you write in your letter? When all of your days are the same in all of your months and all of your years So that's one of the most important most significant Value of making art and prison is to stay connected with your people. Oh, I just wanted to read this to you Someone who came to hear my lecture I was talking about handkerchief art and he remembered he said I had a very dear roommate when I lived in california Marvin Cruz Growing up he never had his father due to his being incarcerated in a federal penitentiary He stressed he would never talk to him again But Marvin's father would send artwork on handkerchiefs all the time My friends and I were extremely impressed with the level of talent that went into his art As we could see slowly it was breaking into Cruz's unforgiving soul Then finally after several years of refusing to talk to his father I see Cruz up in the middle of the night drawing his own picture Which he intended to send to his father that he had not spoken to in over a decade Tattooing is forbidden in all prisons. Nevertheless, it does exist This this is steve collie. His name is He's a lifer and he's been building this body shirt I hear stories all the time about say the electricity going out on a tear in the middle of the night Which indicates that a tattooist is at work I've heard tell of A correctional officer coming out of a tattooist's cell in the middle of the night I know some hair raising stories about people who have Tried to remove a tattoo with a razor Somewhere in the back shelves of the library and an infection ensues but this person was an artist and she knew that if this infection was taken to the nurse that the all the Acrylics in the prison would be confiscated, which is what would have happened So by the way, you can't get Ink in prison to use for tattoo So steve told me the red it comes from robitus and cough syrup The green it's from prel shampoo The recipes for black ink Would raise the hair on the back of your neck. I don't have time to go into them all but they're very Very inventive and resourceful and frightening that they would be put under the skin, but that's what happens So the these are three guys showing you their jailhouse tattoos You notice they're very blurry and that has to do with the fact first of all that The inks are not really inks and they're so they're therefore very unstable and the tattoo gun Is usually a walkman the court of a walkman is brought through the empty shaft of a ballpoint pen and then for the needle they use various things like If they can get their hands on a paper clip You can sharpen it on a cell on the walls Or I heard a guitar pick Is good for that So you can tell how resourceful and how important it is for these folks to make their art So in comes the art program now the things i've shown you as i said before were pre art program But they are also happening all the time This is our class in oklahoma Every art class i've had in every prison has always been a room that has has multi purposes So in this case we have our class in the faculty dining room in about in 1987 I think I moved to massachusetts And started their art programs there in three Men's prisons. This is one of them. This is a medium security prison and This was a collaboration that we made I was allowed to bring in acrylic paint about a year after I was there Because I had not been much of a troublemaker And so they thought it would be okay And you can see everyone here did their own self portrait including me Some of them are just making straightforward pictures of themselves, but a lot of them are trying to tell us who they are Or something about themselves rather For example the man in the bubble was a sex offender and he's showing us How he's been ostracized by the rest of the folks there And the pictures on the wall were painted by people in the art class I Was the perennial bag lady It took me about I don't know four or five years to get smart and start bringing in a luggage Carrier i'm not proud of that It took a long time, but I wasn't there yet and you can see through the doorway You can see the compound. This was a very creative period. This is a very creative prison The difference goes pretty much all the way up to the climate of the whole country and who's president That's what I found in my experience that things get severe and tight under certain Under certain presidencies and certain climate political climate in the country And in this case, this was amazing because there was so much Wonderful art being made So one thing that I introduced is doodling And everyone who comes to my class has to doodle as a practice One full page a week The purpose of doodling is so that they have they begin to develop some confidence In being guided by something that they can't see and they can't name And This is an example So what has to happen is that you put your mind on something like sports on the radio And move your pen around very slowly On cheap paper and what happens often is that this beauty is created So people begin to feel a bit more comfortable about not knowing ahead of time what they're going to draw If you know ahead of time, that means you already saw it or you've already done it, right? So this way I went people in unknown territory when they address their paper or their canvas Not that there's canvas very often This is another Person's doodling completely different. It's interesting because there's no subject matter here and yet it has personality It's humorous. It's active And this comes not from the mind Not from the conditioned mind And these people I'm showing you except for two people in 36 years have never made art before This this is a rare example of Abstraction that I've seen only a few times in all these years mostly because There is theory behind abstract and non-representational art And in this case he was doodling and something his unseen guide told him when to stop and To cut to put to add color. So that's how this piece was created And here's another example Usually There's an idea in prison Of the different ways you can draw and there's an idea that's really good to be able to do portraits landscapes abstracts And so forth and when someone talks about being good at abstracts. They're talking about the kind of a cliche abstraction like lightning lightning strokes and Floating eyeballs and that kind of thing this this As opposed to that it's very different and creative And I have seen in 36 years right going to three prisons a week I've seen thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of art And so for me, this is very rare and very Happy and uplifting and there's nothing here that you've seen before Now I want to introduce you to the one of the first people I met in Oklahoma. This is uh, Charles Mosby This is called prison art class And his teacher who's someone whose hair used to be brown The um What he's what charles joined the art class because he felt that he was going crazy He had been in I think 17 years He just came to art because he was going crazy and he thought this would help What he discovered when he created these strange creatures He thought this was proof That he was going crazy So at that point I brought in some work by well known artists like, um, paul clay Show me row so that he knows And I told him that his the source of his art is the very same source that these famous artists are coming from They have just had very different life and very different opportunities Charles said art became my counseling I can open my eyes and see beauty in colors Like I always used to think my skin was just dark brown But I can see now I am a variety of color That's a very very pointed perception a very sensitive perception from someone who's been just totally reactive For 17 years This is his self portrait. He's uh spinning out his demons And the little orange figure on the back. He said is his conscience See he was he was liberated from worrying about whether he was crazy or not. He just let it He just let it come This is called um drug usage equals enslavement imprisonment and death So this is Charles in his cell growing old With the demons of the night which include alcohol addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine And here is Charles drawing Which says to me again The the miracle of this drawing is pure joy, right? It's pure joy and he had been in A very ugly place Treated very badly And yet he comes up with this this beauty He said I am a wiser person now. I no longer run from goodness I've shown the world how evil I can be and now I want to show the goodness in me This goodness was always in me And that's very important. This goodness was always in me because that is what I am trying That's the message I'm trying to deliver to everyone that this goodness is in you And we have to find a way to express it This goodness was always in me and I drowned it with alcohol My incarceration is hard, but it is not wasteful I will come out of here with compassion I don't know if this is still happening, but you've probably heard those of you Especially in the criminal justice department of the for-profit corporations that are making arrangements with state Correctional Departments to take some of their inmates when they're overcrowded And they usually take the best behaved people Bus them far away where they can't even get phone calls from their family In this case, Charles was sent from Massachusetts to Odessa, Texas For two years. They only send the well behaved people and He didn't have any he didn't make any art and didn't write For about a year and a half and then I got these two little drawings And a letter that said I find myself totally amazed that this jail is so cruel And still he created I have been learning to draw with m&m's and skittles I use a matchstick and the paper falls apart. So only one try in 12 comes out Here is something I have done Then I met Ronnie white At uh, Walpole maximum security prison in Massachusetts Ronnie had is one of the two that I mentioned that had been making art and he had an idea about himself As being an artist This is his commercial work that i'm showing you every Christmas He'll copy from a christmas card. You can see he acquired quite a bit of skill Early on before he was incarcerated and so He made this drawing and got someone on the outside to print up a bunch of cards for him And he's still incarcerated supporting himself all the time because he has no family Left on the outside So he this sort of thing gets him the commissary that he needs And he doesn't have to ask anyone for money When Ronnie was sent to segregation Ronnie's been in for so long partly because he He doesn't want to knuckle under to any officer And is always rebelling So in this case he was sent to this segregation unit at Walpole Black 10 and this is called This is called Forget what this is called But this is his self portrait on the mattress And the images for good and evil the man in the foreground is the part of himself That is good The devil on the toilet Is the part of himself that he feels is evil and there are hundreds of faces hidden His work is kind of an example of what the doodling does because he always starts by doodling little tiny Tight squiggles and as soon as they begin to look like Faces or figures then he develops them and brings brings them out This is his drawing of one other prison that he was in And you can see there's always a usually a little bit of goodness. So there is Jesus going by his window looking over him Again, you can see a little bit from the slide the faces in the walls From time to time I get letters and requests from people who are writing books on this topic And they are looking for cover designs and illustrations for inside And in this case, I make sure they get paid for it too, by the way. So in this case this book Used Ronnie's drawing and it's called been a heavy life stories of violent men So I made sure that when Ronnie's giving the credit on the back of the book That they make sure to say that he was a nonviolent Offender he's a drug addict and he's still inside finishing up 27 years He's never had to use a weapon And this pretty much tells the story. This is called blending in Ronnie's been in for so long. He feels that he Would not be able to cope if he got out And so you can see how he's blended in to the atmosphere Not to mention the beauty here the composition the mood It's the only thing I've ever done that doesn't get me into trouble I know deep in my soul I have the makings of a master in my blood And it may take a lifetime to perfect my talent I realize this because when I'm working Sometimes I get these excitable feelings like I'm really onto something and the path is easy to follow It's not my mind that's giving me these messages. It's my soul I want my work to be recognized for what it truly is as pure as snow Just a reminder of the atmosphere that we're talking about in which these works were made. This is the inner Inner perimeter of a wall pole prison One year wall pole our art room, which was a little classroom at the end of a tier For some reason we couldn't use it. So we were assigned to this weight room It was just a concrete cube with one massive piece of equipment And the men just found ways to sit down in places to put their Drawings and they dug right into it. There's no messing around in these classes. There's no socializing And every week they're grateful to be there This is my drawing by the way This is a part of another collaboration that we did at wall pole our class was in the basement And there were as only a correctional officer would come down about every Once or twice in two hours. Otherwise we were on our own, but it was great because it was a messy room So we didn't have to be that careful about splashing paint Again, people did their self portrait The works on the wall are reproductions of what of their art and we could we were even able to Paint on the wall. So there's bill Engelhardt has gone Into the next room and done a huge drawing on the wall of the streets of Charlestown, Massachusetts The man with his back to us is Arthur Kegney and he's looking at his painting Called a riot in black and white And this is the other end of that painting and there's a little kind of a puny correctional officer um Walking the corridor And there is Jimmy a shows himself with his Beloved fried chicken and cigar which he isn't really allowed to have either one And then tyrone in his blue sweats So I told this class about this today. There's so much humor. There's such a kidding around and so much humor. This is tyrone and jimmy's Christmas card to me. That's that's supposed to be me. I promise you I did not wear bedroom slippers to prison But this is the way they see my teaching is get to work. No messing around So there's a great deal of humor. There's a great deal of affection in this also This is one of Arthur Kegney's cartoons Um This is about an inmate who has disguised himself as an endangered species as a bird whose species is endangered and he has tricked A not very bright correctional officer into calling the warden to see if the execution could be canceled He did millions of cartoons. They were pretty funny. I looked up the word Uh The words humor and humility all come from the same root word, which is humus or humus And it's also the root of the word humanity Humor humility So this is Arthur Kegney's painting when he was a boy this size his father strangled Arthur's sister to death in a drunken rage And he got a few years for involuntary manslaughter So he didn't want the little boy Arthur to visit him on the inside So on Sundays The father would go to the chapel and you can see a little white speck in the upper Right hand corner that is his father going to the chapel because the chapel window overlooked the so station And Arthur's mother took him to the SS station They waved to each other every sunday and that that was their visiting And this is the charlestown neighborhood where Arthur grew up He had lots of stories to tell About stealing coal from the coal truck the whole culture that he grew up in is is a carjacking bank robbing Kind of environment. This is old lady Jackson who had one leg the kids were afraid of So here's someone who never had any art lessons He never the less peoples this with live folks It's kind of like the Norman Rockwell of the nether world And the this is so much alive to me that you can and you can almost push a button and the And the film will continue It's also very rare for beginning people to draw so much gesture when I went to art school we spent months learning how to Express gesture he knew intuitively So nobody's just standing straight in the middle in the middle of the picture and This is by Arthur. It's about a period at Walpole In the early 70s when they some of the blocks were out of control The co's couldn't get in and the men couldn't get out but they had the run Of the cell block and you and he talks about this Um The guys sitting around the table are drinking home brew mixed with tang orange drink Wow, look what time it is already Okay Most guys were armed especially in block two known as death valley and cell nine They are injecting drugs and outside others are waiting their turn The three holy rollers in 26 are reading the bible and cell 40 the guy is sleeping a risky business in these days and by the way The this painting was in a Ronnie and charles and arthur some of the other people Ended up having a dealer in chelsea in new york who was selling their work Not for a lot of money, but the work is very much appreciated because of its freshness and innocence This piece was purchased at the time by the man who was the director of the museum of american folk art In new york for he bought this for his personal collection larry mox this is called Hidden side and he here is speaking about What happens to a person When they're incarcerated this he starts out to be kind of a regular person then he begins to change And charles talks about it being like a jungle sometimes And he thought that he invented the scratch board This is a very Boolean lovely man And doing about two years in county jail And this is his drawing also called count time You see how much interest there is or intuitiveness in the design of this and every Figure has a clock for a face Now you notice probably I haven't spoken about women and that is because I worked maybe An eighth of the time with women not out of choice, but that that's been my assignments So i'm going to show you a few of the women that I've met. This is linor scott Mostly I worked with women in uh, Oklahoma at a correctional center that was the only prison for the women in the state So it went all the way from minimum security to death row. There was a death row there also And I had people in my class from all levels This is linor scott when I was 12 the department of human services granted my real father custody Which exposed me to many indecent sins of the world I remember I was angry when I painted this I was 18 and beginning two life sentences I become part of the history in the little isolation cell the doll still has a heart Despite the crimes she might be guilty of This is crystal simpson crystal was serving 27 years for crimes she committed when she was 17 And um For me this is this is one of the most affecting Representations of what it must feel like to be incarcerated When crystal came out Just before she got out. I asked her what will have changed in your life When you get out because you because you've been making art And she said art helps her now that she's out and connecting with other people in her community I can have a conversation with anyone A banker or professor and if we talk about the rose design tooled on a saddle or the craft project his grandchild made I don't feel like an outsider My experience with art allows me to connect with different kinds of people Sometimes I can even teach them And this is almost like ronnie's blending in this is another version of blending in this by crystal Margarita falcone Was in my class at a county jail This is the belt my father hit me with this is the closet. He locked me in This is the stove. He burnt me on Here I am kneeling on the little carpet with the tax sticking up through it balancing a heavy grindstone on my head And this is called because I love you. That's what he told her john harvey grew up in georgia with six children and a single mother he only finished sixth grade And never made art before The his subject matter was all over the place. He didn't sketch. He didn't think he didn't hesitate He went right for the paint sticks for some reason And if you look at this work that i'm showing by him the sense of design Composition and color is incredible This is called bus stop. This is called businessman At one point he asked me if he could write on his work and I said yes So from then on he was giving his interpretation of scripture So three for the price of a dog. He used the dog He said the dogs are the backbone of the bible. They are beings higher only than the snakes Who have refused to set their responsibility to god and must therefore remain on all fours These dogs are like people who don't know the right spirit look around. They're everywhere And he also said I don't know the whole bible by heart, but I know what I need so the preacher can't fool me Here's an anti-drug statement and this actually is in the bible When I die bury me deep put a bottle of wine at my head and at my feet and let me drink my way from hell to the promised land Just quickly i want to show you some more creative versions of the traditional arts So this is about an inch tall little soap sculpture That a lifer made I always forget his name And this is all he made for years were little chairs and love seats So the and the case was made from popsicle sticks that were Colored with a rusty brillo pad Here's another example. This is a soap carving by Arthur Cagney that came to be the cover of this Book and I have this so carving here This is by Nelson Molina. It's about a jailbreak, but maybe he used two or three bars of soap See they knocked the door down one man is impaled. This is a very dramatic story One man is impaled on the razor wire another man fell to his death on the sidewalk And the passers-by are paying no attention. So the title of this is no one cares This is toilet paper sculpture by Dominic vincenzo And it's about the size that would fit into a shoebox So this is made of toilet paper and cardboard and then painted with acrylic paint The details are incredible the shoe laces the walkman. So this is called released by death And this old timer has secured his release by overdosing himself and ending his life This is probably one of my favorites This is by So this is made from toilet paper or the are the mountains and the faces are modeled from toothpaste It's about this big same size Then I'm going to introduce you to a couple of artists here That I gave an assignment to them to Do a self-portrait within a A structure or an enclosed space And this is anthony's as you can see he he was a graffiti artist on the streets And he had trouble doodling The whole time he would come back and say I can't do it. I can't do it It turned out he was afraid he would lose his chops, you know his graffiti chops But the very last day before he got out he came in waving this drawing and he said okay, I got it I got it He discovered that he could be creative And create something new and still Use his Graffiti chops was the way he put it This is wilmer carabello and you can see he's writing. He's drawing about doodling The doodling is all over the place ceiling floor I use that I use that baseball bat to make sure that everyone does their doodling Look at larry white. He this man was in for 30 years. Look at his self-portrait And his environment And yet what's interesting is that the pictures on the wall and the books on the desk, they're realistic And yet the the environment and his self-portrait are something else So lionel was one of the One of the men who did this assignment and he Handed this in before he was released too. I asked him The same question I asked crystal what will have changed in your life when you get out because you've been making art And he said well, I learned to exercise my gift. I'll have a purpose So I went to close with this painting by Braulio Diaz once he was in the art class I brought in some very large pieces of canvas and also found big discarded window shades in dumpers dumpsters And this is called condominium You can see this is all the beautiful good things that he can think of There's a quote by Leonard Bernstein which is about music But you can replace the word art for music and this is this goes with this I think this will be our reply to violence to make Music or art more intensely more beautifully more devotedly than ever before Thank you. That's it. I'm coming down to answer questions So guys we have time for a couple questions you want to raise your hand tell Do you have a question? I'm asking you Oh, no, I'm overwhelmed. It's uh It's beautiful stuff, isn't it? Yeah, what was your favorite prison to work at? Pardon. What was your favorite prison to work at? Like which one had the best art? Um, the higher the security the better for me Um, because those people have their lives together You know, they can't they know they can't go anywhere And so they're making their life as full and as good as they can. They're at peace um They're more they more able to concentrate intensely people in county jail are generally kind of jittery and You know, they want to get it over with and get out And so they don't they don't make a life for themselves The best class I ever had was in In wallpole maximum security in the segregation unit, which is a punishment unit So they were they were cuffed To walk the tear and come come in to the art room, which was a little classroom The door was locked behind them. They went over to a little slot in the door to to have the cuffs removed And that there were I would say there were about six seven people in there And I would venture to say that group was the most Creative intelligent charismatic People that I've met in all these years and they were in the punishment unit in the maximum security prison So go figure Yeah, well the implications are very interesting. I think anybody else Yeah In your experience did you see more inmates trying to replicate what they saw in the outside world through their art? Or just create something that they had thought of Well, the ones that were not in the art program They're we you know, like they're doing a lot of tattoo flash. For example They they don't much there's been very little artwork where people are Talking about their history Because mostly they've had unpleasant childhoods, right? So they're not They're not at all interested in going back there And the people in my class They're pretty much not permitted to verbalize their own stories Or their history or what they did or how they feel or anything personal So what comes out like you could see John Harvey's work looks like an african-american did it But he wasn't intentionally trying to show his ethnicity So No, they not very much. I mean margarita falcone. She spoke about her abuse And I've just seen that a few times And usually by women men are less likely to Admit to it So good good question. Yes Okay, you'll have to yeah The art was Something that you could pass down. I was just wondering if there are any inmates that you found that have taught others their style of art They teach each other all the time Yes, it's a it's a beautiful thing. You know, we see in the movies They're always trying to fight each other and all of that I have found at least the people that I meet are very solicitous of each other when a new person comes to prison They have to figure out how the how am I going to negotiate this new life, right? And they walk in and see in the common areas people are drawing So they go up to someone and say how do you how do you do that? And they teach each other how to draw And so It's you know, it's really useful in that way. They definitely teach teach each other And it's a very peaceable way for them to interact also, right Yes. Oh, is your hand up or Yes Tell you will you repeat what she said she said I Can you repeat What did she say So in a sense of going in and out of the prison that art in itself became a language That the inmates would Can you tell me tell you what with the question No um, I think they speak to each other And there's a lot of poetry written But of course it is a language. Yes Is that Um, I'm not sure that that's what you mean It is it's a way to communicate. Yes They're not so much even drawing to make themselves feel better Because I speak to them a lot about the fact that making the work of art is an act of generosity It's not just for you. It's not just about you and it doesn't only come from you So so it's it's a responsibility in a way to create something the best Best way you can So it is a language and all the things like the baby shoes are also saying I can also be loving. I can also be good I can create beauty. I'm a full human being Yes Holly, I don't hear very well Just curious, um The prisons that you worked at Like how many times a week What was the The numbers in the way it with the way it works is that A a sign-up sheet is put in when I start a new program a sign-up sheet is put in all the housing units And it's pretty much first come first serve The size limit has to do with the space that i'm given I'll take as many people as I can but usually we have a small space And we meet once a week in Connecticut. I was it worked for the Connecticut system for about six years And that was every two weeks But they there was high security. So they they didn't lose the The energy they didn't lose the flow That's pretty much how it worked Yes You've worked with god release and has tried to contact you um Only a couple people I I made it a point in the beginning not to follow people not to kind stay in contact with people afterward because um It was it was too much. They're they're they're so needy mostly You know, there's a big stigma people have a really hard time when they get out of prison So, uh, even though lionel said he'll he'll find a purpose It's not going to be that it's not that easy So no, I only i'm still in touch with ronnie white who's still locked up Crystal stimson. I was in touch with and she died About seven years after she was released From hep C which she caught in prison Hep C is rampant in a lot of in a lot of prisons So I do not keep in touch. I know one man. I know two people who have kept their art going After prison because like I said their lives are chaotic. It's hard to find work. They're mostly uneducated but one man who was in a connecticut prison was He learned to embroider At his grandmother's knees when he was a young child. So he started unraveling socks He used his um boxer shorts to cut them up Stretched them over tupperware bowl This was minimum security somehow he scored a sewing needle and he embroidered he would embroider sports logos So that that was a really good business Then his Sister brought an art dealer in to visit him At one point and she suggested that he used imagery. That's More more personal more about More his So he started doing these were four inches square And he got out pretty soon after that and so he is still producing these little tapestries He calls them and he has a dealer in new york. He's one person and then That's all I can think of I mean the people who kept making art or people who have had people to go back to Like one man I think was still doing soap carving for a while But his and his mother was supporting him and he lived with her so he was able to keep to keep doing it But no, I don't I don't keep in touch Okay, so thank you very much. Look, there's a lot of beautiful work up there in front Maybe we could put the lights on as they go out