5 Things You Should Know About Prison Art
Art is a tool of self-expression, and some of the best works are created under oppressive, stressful, and distressing experiences. A prison is sometimes a cruel and violent place, yet incarcerated artists accomplish beautiful pieces with little art supplies and skill – at first. Allowing the prison population to explore this medium gave birth to talented and expressive individuals.
How to Send Art Supplies (and Money) to Friends in Prison
A loved one who has expressed an interest in art may not have immediate access to supplies due to these instruments being seen as weapons. However, there are a few ways you can still send supplies or inspiration to a friend or family member in the prison system.
Examples: Michigan Prisons
While you can’t send writing instruments, they are available for purchase through the inmate commissary. You can transfer funds into their commissary account, which they can use to buy other art-related items like paper. Sketchbooks, art books, or other drawing books must be purchased through a third-party retailer, like Amazon, or they won’t be given to the inmate. Finding a jailbird’s address and MDOC number is searchable through an online database.
5 Things You Should Know About Prison Art
1. Prison May Be the First Time an Inmate Discovers Art
Prisons, even minimal security prisons, are often tense, violent, and terrifying to live in. In multiple parts of the United States, UK and Canada, prisons are rapidly declining, and conditions are affected by budgetary cuts. Overcrowding and fewer opportunities for work and education make riots a common occurrence. Being vulnerable can make an inmate a target, so many will turn to art as a way to express themselves. Prison artists begin their art journey drawing their bunk beds, toilet, shoes, and cell door because creativity is initially stifled from fear of discovery.
2. Limited Supplies Doesn’t Prevent or Stop Art
Readily available supplies like envelopes, receipts, or soap become standard means of creating art. Not all prisons offer art classes, so inmates have to adapt to perfect their craft. Inmates have used dye from magazines, pieces of brick, dirt, and their own blood or fingernails. If a guard drops a pen or paper, artists will hide them in the wall, toilet, or mattress to keep them hidden. After their art is complete, inmates will often dispose of it by flushing or eating it.
3. Art is Encouraging for Inmates Seeking Validation
Criminals typically come from poor, abusive, or violent backgrounds. What started as a way to express frustration, fear, and loneliness, art would start to become something specific inmates needed to do to feel validation. Inmates who never received positive reinforcement for a good deed, task, or project would feel accomplished and mattered once other prison mates discovered their talents. It isn’t rare to find stories of inmates that would swap shampoo or food for drawn pictures of their families or portraits of pets that they could keep under their mattresses.
4. Being Creative Can Decrease Violent Behaviors
Multiple studies have found that art programs in prisons increase self-acceptance, give a sense of autonomy, produce growth in life skills, improve motivation, improve communication skills, and decrease violence. Prisons with art programs found lower incidence rates and better cooperation with prison staff and inmates. In a 2014 study, Messner found that prisoners create art as a way to connect to the outside world and to give them hope for the future.
5. Ex-Inmate Artists Tell Their Story Through Art
Koestler Arts, an annual competition for art made in secure hospitals and prisons, shows the beauty and safety art can give to the incarcerated, but it also tells a darker story. Prison abolition and defunding the police protests are huge media topics that were told from inmates’ perspectives for years through art that are finally receiving recognition. Organizations like Koestler Art also draw attention to stolen art that doesn’t benefit the artist but rather police or justice system-led charities that foster the horrible conditions the inmates express.