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9/89
Art from
behind the walls
Inmates create art within Huntsville prison
By Keith Spera
Photos by Mike C. Mulvey
REVIEWER
Some of the inmates in the Texas
Department of Corrections’ prison
system can take trips to the moun
tains whenever they want.
If they choose, they can be visited
by friends or relatives in their cells.
In fact, they are free to see who
mever they want or to go anywhere
in the world — as long as it is done
through their art.
Since the Windham School Sys
tem was established in 1968 to pro
vide educational and vocational
classes for Texas’ prisoners, art
dasses have given prisoners the op
portunity to develop their creativity.
Molly Campbell, the art instructor
at the Huntsville Unit (which is nick
named “The Walls,” because of the
high red brick walls that surround
the prison), conducts six one-hour
art classes each weekday. Between
10 and 20 students attend each class.
Some of the Huntsville Unit’s art
students are not required to attend
classes, either because they have a at
tained a certain reading level or they
have a GED. Otherwise, the inmate
must go to school.
School involves three hours of
classes and an additional hour of ei
ther art or gym, whichever the in
mate prefers. “This causes us to have
a lot of beginning art students who
“Alcoholic”
Drawing by Patrick Arnold
“Cat sitting on a pole”
Drawing by Mill Lee
chose art because they didn’t want to
work out in the gym,” Campbell said
with a grin.
The atmosphere of the prison art
classes is noticeably different from
those conducted outside prison
walls. Classes are always under the
watchful eyes of a prison guard or
two, although Campbell says that in
the eight years she has been teaching
in The Walls, she has never had a se
rious disciplinary incident in any of
her classes.
Prison instructors generally do
not get to know their students on a
first-name basis, because they must
address their pupils by their last
names, such as “Inmate Smith.”
“It’s a matter of maintaining a tea
cher/student relationship, and not
having an overly friendly relation
ship,” Campbell said. “You maintain
“I
I personally, as a
teacher, try to start them
wherever they are and go
from there. With some
people, if they’re here long
enough, you can develop
their taste in different
directions, or maybe they’ll
be more willing to try to
express themselves,
instead of being copyists.”
— Molly Campbell,
art instructor
ir p<
for officers as well as teachers. It’s a
matter of respect.”
Instructors usually do not know
anything about their students’
crimes and sentences. Campbell says
that sometimes her students will feel
like telling her why they are in jail,
but for the most part, they want to
keep that information to themselves.
“A lot of times they tell me that
they think I won’t like them if I
know why (they’re in prison),” she
Molly Campbell, art instructor for the Hunt
sville Unit of the Texas Department of Correc
tions, shows a sample of inmate H.R. Clark’s
Photo by Mike C. Mulvey
art in the Windham School System’s adminis
tration building.
“Hands”
said.
The prison setting prevents the
students from using certain materi
als in their art. Campbell said that
for a while, her students were pre
vented from using some kinds of ink
pens, because inmates would steal
them and use them to make tattoos.
She also said that painting on
handkerchiefs was popular for a
P .
while, but those could be taken as
well and used by the inmates to bar
ter with one another, which some
times led to fights. The handker
chiefs, too, had to be banned for
some time.
Campbell said that many prison
art students have different goals for
their art than do art students in the
outside world. Rather than devel
oping an individual style of art or
making paintings or drawings of
things they make up in their heads,
many prison artists want to be literal
with their art.
“When new students come in, I
ask them, ‘What is your goal, what
do you want to be able do to?’ and
they’ll say T want to be able to draw
what I see,’ ” Campbell said. “I say,
‘OK, we’ll start there.’
“I personally, as a teacher, try to
start them wherever they are and go
from there. With some people, if
they’re here long enough, you can
develop their taste in different direc
tions, or maybe they’ll be more will
ing to try to express themselves, in
stead of being copyists.”
The inmates often want to learn
to do a specific type of realist paint
ing— portraits, she said.
“They all want to do portraits —
they want to do their mother and
their brother and their children, and
they want to do other people so they
can make money,” she said. “I don’t
know why, but portraits are the big
thing.
“You won’t see many portraits
here (on display at Wynne Unit of
the TDC), since a picture of some
one else’s momma isn’t going to sell,
unless she’s a real neat-looking cha
racter,” Campbell said.
Some inmates send portraits to
the show along with the picture the
painting was based on. Generally a
note is attached to these works, indi
cating that the inmate artist is inter
ested in taking orders to do other
portraits.
Customers interested in commis
sioning an inmate to do a portrait
may place their order at the upcom
ing Art Show.
Only a few artists do what is
known as “prison art” — scenes de
picting life behind bars, she said.
From an economic standpoint, that
fact is surprising, she said, because
many of the people attending the art
shows are interested in buying
prison art.
“But most of them (inmates)
would prefer to paint and forget
prison, and do landscapes and places
they’d rather be,” she said.
Several themes show up at the art
show each year. At last year’s show,
many of the artists submitted works
dealing with Indians, other western
themes, and a lot of nature scenes,
said Dr. Alice Fisher, art coordinator
for the Windham School System.
She also said that clown drawings,
which are popular with the people
who buy the art, often are featured
at the shows. “What I’m finding is
that those pieces that sell from year
to year, that’s what they continue to
do,” Fisher said.
Apparently, the prisoners know
their market, because Fisher esti
mates that about 75 percent of the
art is sold each year.
Many of the pieces on display at
this year’s show are nature and out
doors scenes, but the range of topics
is endless. With almost 800 pieces of
art submitted by 106 inmate artists,
most tastes are covered.
There are portraits of everyone
from Donald Duck and Thumper
Rabbit to Marilyn Monroe, Martin
Luther King, Jr., and Robert E. Lee.
Painting by Charli Miller
Besides oil and acrylic paintings,
there are pastels, watercolors, pen
and ink and pencil drawings, and
crafts that include crochet and small
stained-glass pieces.
The work of inidvidual artists can
be dissimilar. Inmate Charli Miller
of the Terrace 3-A Unit, who signs
his works “Charli ‘Bad to the Bone’
Miller,” had a series of paintings on
display that depicted a skull in
flames, a lady on a dragon, and a
Medusa figure. Next to these works
was a painting of a beaming clown.
The inspirations and reasons be
hind their works can vary, too.
Campbell said inmates often get
involved with art in prison because
they did not have time for it in the
outside world.
“In prison, they get involved with
things they didn’t have time for on
the outside — art, religion, and writ
ing— mostly letters,” she said. “That
doesn’t mean they stay with it when
they leave.”
Santiago Patino, one of Camp
bell’s students in The Walls, had sev
eral paintings of Elvis Presley on
sale, some for as much as $65. He
says he plans to continue with his art
once he gets out.
In an essay he wrote to accom
pany some of his art at a show last
year, Patino explained why much of
his art deals with Elvis: “I guess EL
VIS has been a big influence on my
life. To me ELVIS is still the king
and I know he will live in the hearts
of many of us forever. I like to wear
white shoes like ELVIS and dress a
litde like him. ELVIS PRESLEY has
Drawing by Patrick Arnold
always been a superstar to me, and I
admire him very much.”
Another of Campbell’s students,
John Ellis, created paintings of out
door mountain scenes with a man
chopping wood. Campbell said that
Ellis told her that these scenes were
of where he wanted to be and of
things he wanted to do. He didn’t
copy the scenes from a picture; he
made them up.
Walls artist Truman Moffett
wrote this about his art: “To me, art
is three whole different things. One
is a personal, expression sort of a
thing; one is portraits and one is in
come type art. Not many people see
my personal art, even though it’s
what I am most involved in. It’s
mostly surrealistic, dream-like pie
ces.”
For the past 16 years, the Wind
ham System has put on an Art Show
and Sale that features works by in
mate artists.
“It was started in an effort to get
(inmate) students not only some type
of theraputic interchange with their
creativity, but also, we began to en
courage them to do this as a means
to earn a little money that they could
put in their inmate trust funds,”
Fisher said.
The artists who submit works set
the price for each of their art pieces
based on the amount of work that
went into it, she said. All the money
from the sales (except for sales tax)
goes into the inmate artists’ personal
accounts, An inmate can use the
money in his account to buy sup
plies, send it to someone outside the
prison, or leave it deposited until he
is released.
The art show and sale originally
was part of the annual prison rodeo,
but because the rodeo no longer
takes place, the art show has evolved
into an event of its own.
Eleven prison units from around
the state submitted art for this year’s
show. Much of the artwork comes
from the Huntsville Unit of the TDC
prison system.
This year’s show and sale will be
May 6 from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. in the
Windham School Administration
Building at the Wynne prison unit in
Huntsville.
Painting by Santiago Patino