Leaving Stanley Point monoprint - (donated to men's prison)

The mission of this project is implemented through both exhibiting outside professional artwork in prisons and through conducting workshops with inmates

An Open Window has exhibited and donated artwork to several prisons in a number of states. In response to these exhibitions are the following comments by the inmates of those prisons:

"In some of the paintings it is as if the paintings themselves are snapshots of
the moments just before or right after something happened. As I look at these paintings I find myself waiting for the story to unfold itself. It’s the lack of information that pulls me into the paintings and wanting to know more."
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"I see myself in the boat on the river between the dark woods and getting home. For me, it is a metaphor of my life."
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"At first I was thinking that the paintings were too simple until I viewed them over some time to a point of elegance."
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"Some of the paintings come off as there is a sense of something existing, something happened, something had once existed and now it doesn’t."
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"Most pieces seem on the cusp of night or day. They’re perpetually waiting – I can identify.”
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An Open Window conducts workshops in several prisons to facilitate an understanding of art that is not related to therapy, rehab or busy time. My main interest in teaching art is not necessarily to teach “drawing” and “painting” but to teach how to “see.” Many students bring their preconceived ideas of how the world looks to their art.

The problem of how one sees is compounded in prison because the level of vigilance is very high. The prison has been the most intense visual place I have been since art school; more so than art school. The problem with this kind of vigilance is that all “seeing” is seeing in terms of survival or manipulation. To some extent this is obviously necessary, but it takes away from any other kind of seeing: i.e. the seeing that one needs to experience the world as a place of wonder, as a place of exploration (not exploration of the world that reveals the crack in the wall…that is vigilance), the kind of seeing that is required for creativity. This kind of “new” seeing allows for a kind of freedom, the freedom to see the world before it is decoded into concepts.

I had a student who said; “I draw from the heart.” I replied that I thought the heart and head were overrated. “If you follow the heart or follow the head, the next thing you know, you’re in some dreadful place like prison.” I suggested to this student that he follow his eyes –– the eyes actually have the capacity of listening and entering into a conversation with the world without judgment. It takes practice.

Quail painting - by incarcerated person	Skull painting - by incarcerated person

I am not so interested in focusing upon the student's self-expression through art as I think we have all done a fair amount of self-expression and for some, this self-expression have resulted in their incarceration. Of course, someone might suggest that this self-expression should be substituted by more appropriate self-expression. However, like that person one meets who only talks about himself, self-expression is not only NOT art, it is boring. Van Gogh’s art despite what people think is not evidence of self-expression. This art has nothing to do with SELF; it is a relationship to a vital world where the art is a manifestation of that relationship. Therefore my approach to teaching art is directed towards facilitating the student’s connection to a world where art is the collaboration of that relationship.

I am interested in how the artist in prison can develop integrity in relationship to his/her art such that the viewer will not evaluate the work based upon the fact that the artist is an inmate. Many well-meaning people (staff) at prisons are impressed with the artwork of the inmate. I ask how this evaluation can be made separate from the implication it often carries, “Not bad for an inmate.” Can the work be seen outside this status? After all, Caravaggio was incarcerated for murder and lived a life of crime. How often does a viewer looking at a Caravaggio painting exclaimed, “Not bad for an inmate!” And even if another inmate-artist does not fulfill the status of “genius”, how can artwork be seen independent of stereotypes.

Through An Open Door - monoprint (donated to men's prison)

Much of the artwork of the men/women that I meet with are hard-edged, closed formed copies of drawings from various books or things made up from imagination. The artwork at various prisons tends to be very similar. This is not surprising. Artists learn from imitation and if there are few sources for this imitation, it will tend to be the same. It has been my experience in conducting workshops at various prisons that there are five main influences of art in prison: Bob Ross, Miss Centerfold, photos of loved ones, cartoons, and tattoos. The obvious problem with this is there is little room for creativity. There is little room for expanding the world as the artist sees it. It sets off a closed circle of what is “art” and restricts who can do art because its standards are narrow.

In the workshops at prison I rely on art history bringing in many books for students to review. These books initiate discussions answering questions as to why would an artist like Matisse be so famous; what is artistic about Mondrian’s lines, when is more less and when is more more, what is beauty, what is ugly, when is a picture finished, what is Renaissance space, what is Cezanne’s space, what is fine art, what is illustration, what is sublime, why did Plato throw the artists out of his Republic? In addition to stimulating questions, art history introduces new visual ideas into this closed mimetic system of prison.

An Open Window and Prisoner Express are combining efforts in developing an art-through-the-mail curriculum. The Prisoner Express is a project affiliated with the Alternative Library of Cornell University that creates a writing journal newsletter for inmates with a membership of 2000 members. Through this newsletter an invitation will be sent to those members inviting them to participate in this art project. When an inmates chooses to be part of the project, he/she will be sent a packet of exercises, photocopies of art from different traditions throughout history with art history lessons and writings on the philosophy of art. The project invites them to develop their drawings skills in a context of critical seeing and thinking. The inmates' art can then be return for feedback. It is the hope that this project will generate more specific projects to help integrate the inmate artist into a non-labeled art community such that the label "inmate artist" can be eliminated.