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Magee, a young African American, got into a fight in the unit with a Native American (attacked him in his cell as the story goes) and Gray (the African American guy who was painting abstracts and didn’t have that much time left) went to help (as the story goes). Gates is in the Hole (solitary) for six months of this eight months left, plus they tacked on two more months. Eight months of solitary! The weapon was a sharpened end of a paintbrush and since they were both in art class Jack had to do some fancy footwork (via email, excuse the mixed metaphor) to avoid inventorying all our brushes. The inmates can order art supplies and have them in their cells, including brushes and pencils. So we’re down two guys.
Armando came to our Character First discussion today. The first non-white (I hate how race conscious this place is!) to attend. I think he did it for me and I was happy about that. We discussed “Faith” as a virtue (trying to avoid religion, which was not easy). Armando offered many details about Jim Jones’ fiasco in Guyana as evidence that “false faith” exists. True dat.
There’s something new afoot. There’s a batch of four new guys, of which 50% are starting right in with personal, expressive works. Jeremy, a white skinhead, is making a piece with an Incan mummy (face) holding bugs against a frescoed background. Interesting color control. We talked about bringing the piece forward all at once, not finishing one corner. [I’m thinking Anselm Kiefer]
Carl, in his first piece, did something that looks like line-drawn alien figures (white on black) at the bottom of the canvas recipients of “hellfire” rain from above. We talked about the need to be conscious of the lines, when are you wanting the impression to be “sketchy” to the viewer and when were you just in a hurry (or lazy). Oddly, he seemed to listen and made the less important figures more hazy. [Keith Haring?] Read More »
Everyone is excited about the show, at least officially. Armando, the best artist, is refusing to sell any, we’re not sure why. It could be because of his English, though it’s not that bad. It’s possible he wants to send things back to his family, a lot of the Mexican guys want to do that. The show is always mixed emotionally. The guys that have been around a long time know it’s anticlimactic as there are so few people that are allowed to come, mostly the guards and staff and a few people that manage to make it in. They have to check driver’s licenses, etc. about a week in advance.
Jack left me in charge today so some of the guys tried to take advantage of the situation by asking for special favors and passes that I knew nothing about. Plus the guard that inspects the sharps (knives, scissors, etc.) was a young Asian woman who was new to the job and neither of us knew what we were doing exactly. She didn’t want me to ask any inmates for help, I guess I understand why. Read More »
Andy, the Californian Hare Krisha surfer-lifeguard, went the Hole for observation. Not totally sure what all happened, but he’s been on observation before. George (Bill Gates) said he thought maybe he was “never really here,” a ref to what appears to be (heavy?) medication for psych issues. Supposedly he tried to kill himself once. We’ll miss him, though. Jack (the boss) and I joked that being entertaining was an important quality of being an art student in the prison and Andy certainly qualified. It passed through my mind that his fantasy of making “the art of the bull” (meaning bull-and-bear, Wall Street) and inviting (random) brokers to our art sale might have pushed him over the edge. I mean, it was clear his fantasies of marketing his bulls, though not insane, was so far from any sort of reality that could happen, maybe it was all too much to “bear.” LOL. Read More »
Character First sucks this month. This week it was about having an orderly mind, which in itself is not such a bad idea, but when they included daydreaming on the list of bad habits, the prisoners took offense. It seems a bit sacrilegious to put this down as merely a bad habit. As Jacob the Viking said, I have trained myself to go places, places that are not here.
We talked about obsessive thinking and Sandler was in a pissy mood and fucking with us. He kept going on about how “the mother of his child” deserved to die and this was not evidence, as Jacob had suggested, that he still loved her. She just deserved to die, Sandler said. I said who made you god to determine such a thing, but it made no impact. Later, he said he was just joking with us, but I kind of doubt it. He did say he belonged in here and others joined in, that it wasn’t so bad, “three squares and a cot” someone said. It’s weird but I got to wondering if putting guys in the position of irresponsible adolescents was punishment enough, or the right punishment. Seems like people should be punished with MORE responsibility, not less, but I have no idea how that would work. Sounds like life. Read More »
I asked Jack if we had any new pandemics and he said no, but I think he’s wrong. I’m not sure I’d call it a pandemic, but abstraction is definitely spreading as an alternative to Bob Ross Glowing Landscapes. We’re talking Kandinsky, Frank Stella, and I don’t know who else but definitely minimalist geometics. Converts are: Armando, Krupp, and Gray.
Gray started it all with Stella-like works, though today he was on an Art Deco thing of an elongated woman. He wanted the ambersand sign and for some (unknown) reason when people ask me what one looks like I always draw a treble clef. While we were fussing around with it, Gray asked what Prince’s sign was (the musician). That was easy: a merging of the male and female alchemical signs which he decided would do for his painting. I brought some printouts of Stella’s work and wanted to show it to the class. I presented them during our time for new bulletin board articles, but Gray grabbed them, and rolled them up. I didn’t protest too much as I really was thinking about him when I printed them out and the idea of an inmate rolling up an image of Frank Stella’s and covertly taking it to his cell was too much to intervene on, even if it was technically frowned upon. Read More »
Krupp was telling me he was pure bred German and there aren’t many like him anymore. Of course I wanted to steer the conversation away from this subject, but he was the one who jumped. To Odin. He’s an Odinist, but he clarified that you don’t worship Odin, you follow him. Though he’s always in a fog, so that’s hard. Ásatrú — that’s the name of the Viking religion as it’s practiced in the contemporary world, as far as I know mainly in prisons. I’m sure that’s wrong, but I haven’t run into it much and I’ve known a few pagans, Celtics and Wiccans in my day. Anyway, Krupp says in his religion people follow gods (I suggested like in ancient Greece), but mainly the gods chose you. I wanted to say ride you like they say in Haitian voodoo but thought it might be too suggestive. Read More »
Jack says we’re infected with a Bob Ross pandemic. It started out innocently enough with Robert’s work some months ago. He told me there was a guy who had taught him his style, but I thought we had a true self taught visionary landscape artist on our hands. All his landscapes glowed as if from a hidden light. Then Bart showed up as a inmate-tutor and Robert also got elevated to that spot and there they were: The Bob Rossians, cranking it out. They taught a class in the basics, how to use brushes to make trees and shrubery, but then they all started to look alike. Water in the center of the piece, trees on either side, mountains in the background. Now, it’s spreading around the room, there is no stopping it. Now I know why some people dislike Bob Ross. The virus hidden inside the teaching. Read More »
Walking in today I was surrounded by inmates from the block I know. I’ve learned this is not too scary, less scary
Coffey, the huge like the guy in Green Mile, is our new rep for Character First. He’s excited about it, though he rarely smiles. I was going to talk to him about the Van Gogh he’s copying, that he’s drawing a generic face, but I guess he’s a bit intimidating. His size? Maybe.
I brought in an article on Kandinsky for Salvatore, though at first he looked at it upside down which worried me. I’m not sure he reads English. I’d really like to get someone excited about less representational stuff, though Gray is doing some stuff very close to Frank Stella (as a painting). He’s not real talkative, so I just said I liked it a few times. I was going to say something about color, but I’m not really that good with color. I’d like to see what he does, plus Jack is always making color crits.
Alonzo is quite impressive in pencil, though his cutesy pin-up gals aren’t my style. He did finish one original graphite piece, a sort of devil being crucified. Gang graffiti where the INRI traditionally goes? I’ll let someone else get excited about that one. Read More »
I showed Sandler a printout of my latest environmental-religious art. It took him a while to figure out that it was a printout of a painting that I’m working on. We discussed belief. He said he could feel the Apocalypse coming. When I explained James Lovelock’s idea (we need nuclear powered cities in the Artctic now!) which he liked it. I explained the four faces were Al Gore, Rachel Carson, James Lovelock and Pocahontas. He thought Pocahontas was a beard-free Jesus. Thanks. I didn’t try to explain that the vegetation would be an homage to Henri Rousseau. I didn’t want to sound like a pedant.
Sander and Jacob are “homeboys” though I didn’t know that tattooed, long-haired white guys who both subscribe to the “Viking religion” would refer to themselves that way. They were giving Rudy a hard time during our Character First discussion (we do this every Tuesday) on our topic, “Enthusiasm.” During the exchange it came out that Jacob was called The Terrorist because of his long beard and his amazing ability at sacking quarterbacks during their (flag?) football games. Perhaps Rudy is on a different team. I don’t know. It might be an alpha-dog thing.
Lamar is doing art again after a long hiatus. Not sure why. A self portrait in watercolor. I call him the Professor, though no one else does. He often reads marketing books or books about unusual investment opportunities (things like oil drilling rights) during class. Now he’s reading a book on world conspiracies like the Freemasons, etc. I actually have the book, which is weird. He seems to have a special status of some kind. Character First is never the same when he doesn’t show up. He likes to start with saying what bullshit it all is and how “they” (guards, people outside of prison) ought to do it before they bring it to the inmates. Jack (the instructor) and I often tease him about his giving advice professionally, though today he was offended when we both laughed when he said they should make him the warden. Sometimes we joke about “What Would Rene Say?” Rene always liked to talk during Character First. He would always bring it back to weed, beating up your lady, and things that were totally contrary to anything in the program. But he was entertaining and liked the role playing games. Read More »
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