C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

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.

Spent quite a bit of time with George. He’s working on a his first series of acrylic landscapes and was proud that he was used a spatter technique that he’d not seen anyone else use. True. He’s so congenial and “white executive” ish I blurted out what is your crime? He said murder which surprised me. Then he said he was innocent, framed by a colleague at his computer company who killed a woman then said he was a witness to George doing it. Seems like he screwed up a lot with lawyers and never got much justice out of the system. He said some undercover cop came to visit him in prison and said he could kill the people that put George in. George said yeah do it and then they used that also against him in court. Probably a poor decision to even let yourself talk like that, though I didn’t know it was a crime if it’s not carried out. He’s been in since 1977 and looks like a tall, pudgier version of Bill Gates.

Santos finished his Michael Jackson masterpiece (thank god). It’s hard to like.

Andy’s back from what I don’t know. I had heard he was on suicide watch for a while, though he’s always so smiley it’s hard to see him that way. He’s our resident Californian and plays it up.  A surfer, life guard, etc. He said he had written up his story on some internet site (125 pages!) but I couldn’t find it. He’s making a series of paintings of bulls and invited a broker from Fidelity (randomly? how did he get the card?) to come to our art show in November. I tried to get him to do bulls and bears, but he said no one likes bears (market-wise). He might be right about that. I showed him some Lascaux cave paintings as his sketchy sumi-influenced bulls, quite lovely really) reminded me of cave art. He said cave art meets Andy Warhol. Smart guy.

Now he’s sitting next to Clay and has animated him. I have mostly experienced Clay at a short, sickly man who apologizes for asking for the bathroom pass and always says the same thing. “I drank too much coffee.” Funny how some guys are really diligent about the pass and others sort of ignore the whole procedure. Turns out Clay is quite the guitarist. He talked really fast and explained how he had been taught by some guy in North Carolina, part of some group (country?) that he assumed I would know. He rambled on so fast about camping and mosquitos nets and sitting under a tree practicing for hours I didn’t have a clear notion of whether this was in another prison (a lot of guys have spent time in other institutions) or whether it was in his former “real life”. Being befriended by Andy, though, does up Clay’s status a notch, whatever that’s worth.

Rumor has it Andy is a Hare Krishna, but I haven’t asked him about that yet. He did tell me a little about his crime which was assault on his exwife after she accused him (unfairly) of rape. He said he was taking DHEA (which he spoke of with respect) and knew Aikido. He also beat up “one of her fiancees”, so he didn’t make a case that he was innocent. Aparently his father is a “real” artist. I wonder what that means.