The Prison Arts Project Blog

Arts in Corrections at San Quentin State Prison,
photography by Peter Merts – petermerts.com

Dear friends and supporters of Prison Arts,

An urgent situation has developed from the current state budget crisis with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s response being to layoff staff in education, vocational, substance abuse, and other inmates programs – including the one Artist Facilitator at each prison.

We need your help – the Artist Facilitator position is critical to continuing arts programming with any consistency and quality and we want to raise our voices to powers-that-be.

Would you be willing to write a letter against cutting the Institutional Artist Facilitator position and thus the elimination of Arts in Corrections?

Send your letters to:

Laurie Brooks (we want to collect all the letters), Executive Director, William James Association, P.O. Box 1632, Santa Cruz, CA, 95061, laurie@williamjamesassociation.org

Nettie Sabelhaus, Senate Rules and Appointments, State Capitol, Room 420, Sacramento 95614, Nettie.Sabelhaus@sen.ca.gov

Elizabeth Siggins, Chief Deputy Secretary Adult Programs, CA Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, 1515 S Street, Suite 501S, Sacramento, CA, 95811, elizabeth.siggins@cdcr.ca.gov

Scott Kernan, Undersecretary, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento, CA, A 94283-0001

Matthew Cate, Secretary, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento, CA, A 94283-0001

Write to your Senators and Assemblypersons – find them with you zip code at www.legislature.ca.gov

Please send me copies of what you send and let me know if I can help you in this effort!
Thank you so much for your support,

Laurie Brooks
Director, William James Association

Here’s a great example letter from Judith:

Dear Ms. Sabelhaus:

Given California’s various crises, I realize that every state agency must make massive cuts. I urge you to bring to the legislature’s attention that the CDCR should not cut Arts in Corrections. The program has minuscule cost and vast positive impact.

Arts in Corrections provides a large number of prisoners with programming that teaches transferrable skills, reduces tension, and encourages deep self-reflection and responsibility – all for the cost of the salary of only one low-range state employee. The professional artists who teach through Arts in Corrections either volunteer or are paid through grants given by individuals and non-profits.

I taught through Arts in Corrections in the 1980s when the program was much more fully funded. My Disguised as a Poem: My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin is a memoir about this experience (copy enclosed). For the past decade I have spoken nationally about prison and prison arts and so I am able to see – in state after state – the respect with which California’s Arts in Corrections is held.

To lose Arts in Corrections – a program that costs the state virtually nothing – would be to lose a program that positively impacts large numbers of prisoners and one that is a revered model in the field.

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Judith Tannenbaum

jtannen@earthlink.net, www.judithtannenbaum.com

Peter Merts’ Slide Show of San Quentin’s Arts In Corrections program is featured on Photo Philanthropy – a new website that is dedicated to showcasing the work of photo documentaries.  Kudos to Peter for his beautiful photography that shows off the beauty of what is happening in the 20×40 box that is the San Quentin Art Studio.  Tip of the hat to Steve Emrick for wrangling the paperwork and administration to bring Peter inside and to the team of artists: Patrick Maloney, Katya McCulloch, Zoe Mullery, Kurt Huget, Ken Arconti, Suraya Keating and Marin Shakespeare Company!

The Prison Arts Project at San Quentin is going strong with activities seven days a week – painting, drawing and printmaking classes, inmate bands, theater, writing workshops and book-binding.

We received a $25,000 challenge grant from the Marin Community Foundation, which means that your donation to support the Prison Arts Project at SQ is doubled.

WJA’s commitment to keeping the arts alive at SQ as a living example of excellence in correctional arts programming and it is paying off:

Michael Franti and Spearhead performed at San Quentin on May 19, 2007. You can see more in an episode of FrantiV or read about it in Leah Garchik’s column in the Chronicle.

Alarm Magazine wrote a long and thoughtful, two-part story about Arts in Corrections at San Quentin.

Marin Independent Journal published an extensive piece about the visual arts program with some very nice photographs of the guys and their artwork.

TOWER BOOK Black/ White [and Read] Designed by Beth Thielen, the Tower Book project is a collaboration between the women of California Rehabilitation Center and the Men of San Quentin and is the first of its kind. The work is currently in the exhibition: “Black/White and Read” which opened at the New York Center for the Book in April, 2007, showed at the San Francisco Center for the Book, last fall, just closed a the Los Angeles Book Arts Center and will open at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts April 2008. More information and pictures are available here.

The creative writing group, aka the San Quentin Nine, has just released their second anthology, Brothers in Pen: A Means of Escape. Their first anthology, Brothers In Pen, released in 2006 is also available on-line.

Congratulations, also, to SQ9 member Kenny Brydon for winning the 2007 PEN.ORG Prison Writing Program honorable mention for fiction with a short story entitled, San Quentin, July 4, 1975.