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?]

Sam, another skinhead, has been making money on portraits in prison. He blows ink out of a ballpoint pen and “paints” with a small brush and smudger to produce quite realistic portraits. He wants to learn how to paint (afraid of color) and hopes our master Trent will help him.
Trent had a “temper tantrum” when he found out that the commission he got at the last art show was supposed to be “anonymous” and though everyone knew who commissioned it, he wasn’t supposed to. The offender was offended, apparently.

Clay is still working on his Hard Rock logo piece with detailed guitars.
Delano is doing moody Christmas paintings.
Jerald is finishing a graphite commission of a Neolithic female warrior.
Rene destroyed his first piece, was working step by step out of a book to make a landscape.
George is trying his hand at abstraction. Georgia O’Keefe?
Glad the show ruckus is over. It’s settling down again.

My friend Dan Kelly asked to see my new masks so this was the easiest way to show them.

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.

The Character First exercise had the drawing of a chipmunk on it with it’s mouth full of nuts. It was drawn in a fourth grade illustration style that made me cringe. I’m not sure. I thought for sure the guys would have a heyday with that chipmunk, but they pretty much ignored it. I said you guys live in small spaces, like chipmunks, sort of as a segue and sort of in the spirit of irony, but they said yeah we do. They started telling me about Cahuga’s cell which was notoriously messing. Cahuga used to come around until the incident where we were accused of having gang meetings in the art room. He’s a handsome fellow who is an excellent artist. I was surprised his cell would be so messy. They said he was a swamper (janitor) and they get special privileges like having dirty rooms. Apparently.

Rob keeps talking about Terry Redlin and I always have to remember who he is. If you’ve never heard of him, that’s understandable, but he has a huge following. I would say he does realistic art and he does, but it’s more like realism with a touch of Norman Rockwell and a touch of Bob Ross all by way of nature art. I see that there are many art worlds, and that in some ways there are thriving mini-markets that function the way the fine art functioned (I’m imagining in the Left Bank of Paris days). People buy this stuff, treasure it and like it. People learn to paint like Bob Ross. And you have to be a snob not to have some appreciation for Norman Rockwell. Though none of it has much to do with what I’ve always thought of as art expect it’s “better” than art I could do, technically speaking. I think Southwest Art is another functioning world, where the excuse of region and décor shrinks the “world” down to something where you can trust your taste. I suppose even tattoo art is not unlike a functioning mini-market too. It might be the place where personal commitment is highest. That art—whether you call it a cartoon or illustration or whatever—is inscribed into your flesh. That’s commitment.

In the end I find it confusing and inspiring to be around all this. Inspiring in that you see the futility of caring about the “big” markets (fine art, museums) and confusing in that my taste, for what it’s worth, is clearly in the minority and sometimes hard to stand up for. How can I argue against Terry Redlin who bought a building for $11 million and donated it back to the city?

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.

Michael “Machine Gun” shaved his head. Hardly recognized him. Working on his first acrylic, a samurai riding a futuristic tiger. Trent, the best artist-tutor, was helping Coffey paint a face of some Brittany Spearish pop star (only younger, what do I know?) and it was sweet. Sweet is an odd and dangerous word to use in prison, but here I can say it. The way the guys help each other on their artwork is amazing. And sweet. There was another example of Armando (a fierce looking Mexican) helping Jerald (a non-fierce looking overweight Mexican) make realistic folds in a graphite drawing of some kind of death figure.

Pandemic update: Bob Ross dominates, though abstraction isn’t dead. A third candidate might be Guadalupe as Gray (an African-American who has been doing abstraction) started on his Mother Mary. I probably went too far when I teased him if he had changed religions, this being of course The Lady of Guadalupe that Alonzo made in a super-sized painting for his mom. Come to think of it, Coffey, also African-American is working on one and he sits next to Gray. More evidence that these kinds of things actually “spread.”

The Character First topic was keeping an organized work space. The conversation, as always, wonders all over the place somehow ending up on the fact that Sandler (white/Viking) and Fairchild (Native) lived in the same neighborhood growing up. Fairchild said he used to try to swerve his car to hit “the little shit” on his bicycle. And Sandler said Fairchild was the dealer (pot) for the neighborhood. I said, “Ah, the good old days,” but I think only Jack saw the irony of that. Jack and I kept bringing it back (somewhat for entertainment, tongue-in-cheek) to the organized work space. “Was Fairchild an organized or unorganized dealer?” I asked. Fairchild said, oh very organized, he could tell the weight of an ounce without measuring it. Sandler rhapsodized about his days as a car-contents thief and I asked him if he preferred to rob organized or disorganized cars. He said disorganized were way better.

People still tease Rob for being “too organized” regularly. Sandler said Rob was from a “rich family” in Wisconsin, though his crime of strangling his wife and hiding her body in a shed is pretty horrific. He claims he has no memory of the event and several days surrounding it. He makes a point of shaking my hand goodbye every time I come.

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.

The two paradigms, BOB ROSS PANDEMIC and the Abstraction Virus are fighting it out. I’ve never been a huge fan of abstract painting, but I’m finding myself on the side of the abstractionistas. Armando, I thought, was firmly launched last week but here he was again painting a landscape. His colors and style are at least original. It’s hard to understand if its prisoners’ interpretation of “what people want’ (vis a vis the upcoming sale) perhaps combining with the inherent longing to see natural (unfenced) spaces. Rob is still doing Bob Ross, but he has an attention to detail that I’ve never had the patience for in my own work. And I admire that.

Krupp is my new best hope for abstraction. He actually seeks out my advice, does something, then wants me to come look at it. I suggest a different brush size or something, another go at the thing. I found myself complimenting people on things like “affinity to texture.” I seem to be saying the same things a lot: nature is messy; don’t be regular; see what part of the painting you like and what part you don’t. I’m a bit embarrassed I’ve never been to art school and here I am doing this, but mostly it’s an eye and a bit of encouragement people need. I say “challenge yourself” a lot. Cub scout leader, I was good at that.

I brought in some printouts (lousy repros) of my masks. Turns out Jacob was the only one I showed them to. It’s hard to find someone interested in anything outside themselves. Says something about the population. Jerald seems to be growing some confidence, adding “hippie mandalas” to his repertoire of tattoo-inspired art. Fairchild is ready to tackle his first acrylic. He wants to do Dale Earnhardt, the NASCAR driver who passed on. We discussed how he could do it in an Andy Warhol silkscreen style but avoiding colors (like blue or grey) that might refer to the color of dead people’s skin.

Clay keeps working on his cardinal picture… seemingly forever.

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.

Krupp, the Odinist, is interesting.  Not much of an artist yet, but he’s just starting.  He seemed to know a lot about language and signs his (two) paintings with the kanji sign for rage. He tried to show me the Edo (?) alphabet he said was used secretly by the Goths (?) in Transylvannia to communicate with each other. O-kay.

The Character First topic is Orderliness for the (whole!) month.  I suspect some of these are written by nuns. Nevertheless we persevered quickly veering into accusations of who might be “too orderly” or OCD. Rob was accused. Apparently he and the Viking Jacob had made up and were tussling like grade school kids through the meeting. Nevertheless, Jacob accused Rob of being OCD.  Sandler veered the discussion to neatness in the cell and how to hide your tattoo needles. There was some discussion of this, Jacob saying its best to hide them in obvious places as they (even “Doogie Howser”—I have yet to hear that one) couldn’t find them. Someone said if Fed pens you can own tattoo needles, but I have no way of knowing that. Seems unlikely.

Jack told me a story about the guy with no face. No face? Yes, he shot it off with a shotgun trying to commit suicide. Apparently his reconstructive surgery has been approved. He lasted only one day in Art Class, though. Too negative. Even the note Jack wrote him he brought into his office mouthing off about “passive aggression” a joke that continues.

“Machine Gun”, the young Native kid, is still signing his art with Machine Gun.  Jack’s going to talk to him about that.

Discussed the upcoming Art Sale and everyone groused at the upper limit of $200 on the art and that all these charges have to be taken off that gross. Jack told people to write a kite (anonymous complaint) about it.

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.

We’ve been told to discourage the use of nicknames, even surnames. We got a new guy today, African American, apparently the cousin of someone else in our class. Odd how this happens, he’s the second cousin of someone to show up. The other guy we got was a Native. Jack asked him if he wanted to go my his surname, Micheal, or his last name, and he said he wanted to go by Machine Gun. This was based on the crime he was incarcerated for: getting beat up at a party and going back and getting an AK-47 and killing three guys who beat him up. You’d never know the guy looks about 21, maybe he is. An innocent young face.

Jerald was a car artist before he came to prison, the second one of those we have in class. I think he was surprised I could help him, but all I suggested was using a tribal or organic shape to connect his images, the car, the masks and the angel.

Armando is really quite a good artist. He’s painting Quetzalcoatls. The first one, a giant muscley Aztec is fighting the god on top of a pyramid. He’s also painting an eagle carrying the word “eagle” for his son of 15 years he’s never seen but who likes the Philadelphia Eagles.

We lost one guy to a cell hooch search. He’s a know supremacist and was caught on video warning hooch (alcohol) suppliers about the search. We almost lost Sandler to the same problem as he was seen on video at the laundry apparently talking to the warning guy. He came back from what he called the “kangaroo court” that forced him to say he was guilty of a lesser infraction.  He (half jokingly) said if whoever had packed up his stuff would have been a dead man. Hard to know what to do with jokes like this.

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.

During Character First (the topic: Energy Givers, Energy Wasters) the topic of smelly people came up again. Usually it comes up at least once a session. They were talking about Snake Man, who has some horrific skin disease (worse than Clay’s!) that actually sheds (as in snake). He also hisses like a snake which one might speculate is a natural “embrace the epithet” routine. Being interested in circus freaks, I wanted to know more, but like so many stories it was there one moment, gone the next.

Aside from the Ross Pandemic, people are starting to prepare for the Art Sale in five weeks. Andy, the Californian, doesn’t seem to get it. Not fully. Actually he has some pretty good ideas like painting bulls for the offices of financial people, but everything comes out half-baked, odd and off-putting. He handed me a note with a bunch of 800 numbers on it for places like Smith Barney and asked if I would call “them” and invite “them” to the art show (to buy his bulls). I needed Jack’s intervention to get out of this, which we’re not allowed to do: that is, special favors for people. Jack is also mad at Andy for using too much gesso which is in short supply now. That and using large canvases for his “bulls” plopped down in the center. It’s hard to be so discouraging to a budding entrepreneur. Jack and I figure it might be the anti-psychotic drugs he’s on, seeing as though he tried to kill himself not that long ago and ended up for a long stay in The Hole.

Spent some time with Fairchild talking about zeroing in on tiny parts of a human face (like the nostrils) and how to see them as “alien shapes”, anything other than “nostrils”.  He did some nice ones then drew a straight line for the mouth. Oi vey.

Jacob and Rob were working side by side to copy a Monet of a barn with snow on it. I’m hoping it might be an antidote to the Bob Ross Pandemic, copying the masters.

Spent some time with Fairchild talking about zeroing in on tiny parts of a human face (like the nostrils) and how to see them as “alien shapes”, anything other than “nostrils”.  He did some nice ones then drew a straight line for the mouth. Oi vey.

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.