“Light from Inside: Art from Illinois Prisons” Opens at Chicago Cultural Center

(Chicago) – Inmate art has interested psychologists, sociologists, writers, and sympathetic artists for decades. Now Chicago area residents can now view this genre.

“Lights from Inside: Art from Illinois Prisons” will display approximately 100 art works from Illinois prisoners in a variety of techniques and media at the Chicago Cultural Center, August 11 through September 28, 2008.

The exhibit is sponsored by the John Howard Association of Illinois, the State’s leading prison reform group.

Long-Term Prisoners and “Lifers”
“Lights from Inside” features artists from the most restrictive Illinois prisons including Pontiac, Dwight,

Menard, Stateville, Lawrence, Pinkneyville, Western, Hill and Tamms Supermax facilities. Most of the artists are long-term prisoners and “lifers” who are self-taught and have worked at their craft without the usual tools of an artist.

Members of the Art Committee of the John Howard Association and staff from the Illinois Department of Corrections gathered the art works.

“The work represents an escape into another realm for the incarcerated man and woman,” said Cynthia Kobel, a member of the Committee. “Many of the artists must be inventive with the medium they use since few of the prisons have art supplies.”

Kobel noted, “In the past, many artists used soap to create sculpture, but the Department of Corrections end the practice, deeming the soap sculptures as “destruction of state property.”

The inmate art and inventiveness have a fascinating range:

• Cornelius Ames has built a three-dimensional sculpture of a miniature fortress with bricks made out of newspaper and water, using newspaper and toothpaste for mortar.
• Others have used bed sheets and discarded paper as canvases.
• Other inmates have created art using plastic mirrors etched with staple points. Some have pieced together envelopes to create poster-size paintings.
• At Tamms Supermax prison the only art tool is a four inch flexible ink pen tube, but men there have found that they can use Jell-O and candy to create color.

The work can be viewed on http://Lightsfrominside.blogspot.com.

John Howard Associaiton Luncheon

The “Lights from Inside: Art from Illinois Prisons” survey will also exhibit during the John Howard Association’s Annual Luncheon at the Cultural Center on September 18, 2008 at noon.

Jeffrey D. Colman, Esq. will be the luncheon speaker. Mr. Coleman, a well-known attorney at Jenner and Block, has represented small and large corporations, partnerships, and class action litigation. He has represented African-American home purchases in discrimination litigation and has litigated death penalty cases in Georgia and Illinois.

Currently, Mr. Colman is a key member of the team of lawyers defending prisoners confined by the United States government at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.