Direction For Our Passions

DIRECTION FOR OUR PASSIONS

U-M HOSPITAL HOSTS PRISONER ART EXHIBIT

by Blaine Crosby

While searching for the real meaning of life at 48 in mid-Michigan I chanced to find two men who were producing more artwork than a gallery could hold. The setting from which this flood of drawings carne, was a crowded prison cell at the Milan Federal Correctional Institution. How is it possible I asked myself to create inspiration for others, while living crammed inside a place filled with hundreds of men? Here is the story behind their art exhibit. - Katherine Moor

Paul Green and I met coming into the federal prison system in El Reno, Oklahoma in the summer of 1986. We met again in a shared cell in the admissions unit at the prison in Milan, Michigan that f all. Paul was 26, from Houston. I, 20 years older, came from Minneapolis. Paul was the neophyte first-timer. I was a cynical old convict, accepting that my best years were gone.

I made greeting cards, some in pen and ink, some in water colors as Paul watched. We exchanged the harsh small talk common to prisoners everywhere. Paul's past had no direction. He'd been to college and dropped out, and worked a variety of term jobs. He'd always taken the easy way out. As for me, I had spent the last 10 years as a heroin addict, in and out of California's prison system.

After a while Paul began helping with the greeting cards and calligraphy. He told me he'd never tried to draw before. After seeing his first efforts, I believed it.

Over the next year we became inseparable, working together picking up trash on the yard, eating together and most importantly, doing art work. As I tried to teach Paul, lessons far wider than the art became our focus. Paul discovered a direction for his life, the passion of creating. And I stopped using drugs, discovering how much I had to give. We scrounged materials and went without other necessities to order paper and pens, often waiting three or four months for the clumsy prison bureaucracy to process orders.

Being a poet, I had never considered myself an artist. When asked about it, my usual reply was, "Oh I just do graphics." When other prisoners carne around offering brief accolades, Paul would respond, "Me, I'm just learning."

The work kept getting better and better as we helped each other, by now working as equals, giving each other the courage to try projects that seemed too difficult.

Paul plans to go to art school when he is released. His life has found a meaning and he understands the importance of dreams and hard work. I have learned the value of every drug-free day.

From now until May 18, a small collection of our work will be shown at University of Michigan Hospital, 2nd floor, West Corridor. This show is a culmination of 18 months' work. Kathy Moore helped make it possible. She wrote letters, raised money, and carried stacks of drawings in the back seat of her car, always eager to show them to anyone willing to look. She encouraged the two of us to keep going and helped us to continue to grow and to believe. Love and trust and encouragement create beauty, even in the harshest of places.