Preface:

I'd like to thank Louise Olof-Ors and everyone at HoA Society for this great opportunity to talk about the Pyrrhic Defeat project. Thank you! Also, I want to express that I am very sorry for the crime I committed that brought me to prison. In 2012, I caused a fire that injured 3 people. I'm serving 10 to 40 years for that crime. Daily I send my prayers to the fellows I've hurt and to their families.

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Tell us about P.D... How did it start and what does it mean?

Pyrrhic Defeat: A Visual Study Of Mass Incarceration began in 2014 without any clear direction or purpose in mind. I was drawing my fellow prisoners as a way to hone my skills and to provide my buddies with gifts they could mail home to family. Then, I had a feeling that I should amass these portraits but I had no idea for what purpose. I took it on faith that there was a reason. In late 2015 I became friends with artist Joe DeVito (creator of King Kong of Skull Island) and he suggested that I collect the portraits with the intention of putting a book together. From the point of that suggestion, I began to take the project more seriously. In 2015 a confluence of epiphanies happened within the span of a couple months that set me on a locomotive's path of purposeful art making. Around that time, I read the book The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get Prison. It let me understand all of the mechanisms grinding away within the American criminal justice system that I previously couldn't prove but had suspicions of. One day, I flipped open the book and the phrase "Pyrrhic Defeat theory" was glowing. That's when I knew it was the title for what would turn into the major portrait project it is now. The piece being shown at MoMA PSl contains 650 individual portraits. The first time I showed the piece, it had only 96 pieces and was the dimensions of a prison cell. When I heard that a viewer at that show was so overcome with emotion that they had to run to the bathroom to throw up, I knew we were on to something!

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When did your artistic career begin?

I started drawing as a young kid, like most kids. The whole career thing didn't start until long after I was in prison. It was 2015 and I was at the lowest low of my life. I was overcome with all kinds of emotions and stress and the weight of a forty year sentence. As I laid in my bunk one day just waiting to die, I turned on the radio for classical music to distract me from all the screaming and metal gate slamming and prison noise. Instead of music, I got what turned out to be the most influential message of my life. Australian artist Johnny Romeo was on the radio giving an interview about his practice. He spoke of his struggles and the difficulties of the first years of his journey, but also of the importance of working through that and fulfilling his purpose in life. By the end of his interview I was on my feet drawing in the cell and haven't stopped since. Not a day goes by that I haven't drawn or painted with purposeful intention.

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Do you look at other artists for inspiration? Who are your biggest influences? 

I love the quote from Chuck Close, "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work." But I'm not anywhere near as talented as Close, so I'll tell you my secrets. For me, most of the influence comes in the form of work ethic. Artists who are my biggest influences aren't in the history books yet. But they will be. Johnny Romeo (pop artist), Joe DeVito (creator of King Kong Of Skull Island). and photographer Jay Blakesberg have been hugely influential in my practice. Not all of my work is in graphite, I have other bodies of work that are very colorful and range from pop to surrealism. In some of my work, you can probably spot influences from Dorer and Daumier, Van Gogh and Lautrec... old heads like them, but also contemporary artists like Juhasz and B. Riley. Even H.R.Giger has contributed to some of my compositions! I try to learn from everyone but copy no one.

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Is there a specific order to the portraits?

Nope. whimsy : )

 

How has your perception of prison been influenced by your own experience?  

Well, at one point in my life I thought of prison as the place bad people went and were punished. Fed them bread and water. Badman's Camp. Society helps to reinforce that idea, a lot of people really just don't know how it all works until one of their family members gets caught in the web . Even then i ts not obvious, because of how desensitized America has become to the situation. Most of America feels its just normal for 2.4 million people to be locked up. It wasn't until I started to question "why?" that I began to understand the way it all works. Sure, some people have done things to cause harm and should pay a price for that, but prisons do not fix broken people, they make broken people even worse. So why do so many prisons exist in America? The answer is simple and complex at the same time: it's HUGE business! And the lawmakers who have the power to change things are being lobbied by unions whose members make huge salaries from the prison complex. Not to mention all the cottage industries that 'serve' prisoners (i.e. phone company, commissary, medical, etc.). We're talking about billions of dollars annually. It's all based on capitalism, from the way laws are made (and why) to the way communities are policed to the way people are sentenced and released.

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Has your artistic practice been influenced by your situation? 

Yes, in the same way that an ice cube is influenced by the little square of the tray. I'm constrained by parameters of what kind of materials I can get, quantity, quality, size... and the space I work in (my cell) is very tight quarters with little room for stepping back to assess progress. When I'm drawing a sitter, it happens out in the day room of the prison block, or in the gym or yard. We have to work as fast as possible because anything can happen (a fight, a lockdown, an arbitrary ousting). Sometimes when I'm doing a sitting, we are shoulder to shoulder with other prisoners and it is like drawing on a crowded boat that's swaying. That doesn't happen often, but it has been the case for some of the portraits. I hold my drawing board with my left hand at eye level and draw with my right hand.

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Has it helped you cope with your situation?

Yes, absolutely. Hugely! When I'm drawing I get my much needed meditation time and I get to defrag. Also, it has helped me a lot in being able to create a bubble of safety around me. Most of the more important prisoners here respect me and my work and feel that I'm an asset... so I don' t have to worry so much about being preyed upon, which is always a real possibility in prison.

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Is it common for inmates to create art? 

Yes, it's very common! Some prisons even have a mural program. Quality materials are difficult to acquire but, simple supplies like colored pencils and copier paper are avail able on the prison commissary. I'm always happy to see other guys drawing to pass time or to get their hustle on by making greeting cards or decorating envelopes. There is a great book that was published on the subject called Marking Time: Art In The Age of Mass Incarceration by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood. She does an incredible job at taking the reader through the whole situation. My work is featured in the book among very talented artists that blow my work out of the water. I'm honored to be a part of it. I'm recommending this book not because of my own involvement with it, but because it is the most exhaustive and accurate book written on the subject.

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Is there a sitter that stands out to you? 

Phil Africa. The story is far too much to explain, but a Google search will give you a lot of info on him and the situation. Phil died here in prison. His brother Delbert also stands out as one of my favorite sittings. I had some of my best talks ever with those men.

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Why graphite?

For Pyrrhic Defeat I chose the obvious tool, which is a pencil. But I have other bodies of work in which I use other colorful media. Graphite is less messy than charcoal and more quick and forgiving than ink, so I use either a graphite pencil or a black colored pencil, generally. But there are a couple dozen portraits with which I experimented with ballpoint pen and with colored pencils other than black. For this project, a monochromatic approach is necessary because of the speed that's required to get the job done.

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How long do the portraits take? 

When I first began the project, the sittings took between 30-40 minutes each. Then I shaved that down to 20 minutes.Timing and speed are crucial in this environment because of the uncertainty variables. So I had to learn to draw as fast as possible without compromising the accuracy of likeness. Now a sitting takes between 12-18 minutes, since I've had to get quicker because of lockdown issues due to the pandemic. Also, it's just difficult to sit still for more than 15 minutes amidst all the chaos of prison, so I have to consider how my sitters feel.

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Why ¾ view and not full frontal? 

I like this question. The portraits are all drawn in what's know n as "¾ view" for two reasons. The first reason is that the angle gives an accurate conveyance of the sitter's natural appearance. The second reason is that maintaining the eye contact during a full frontal portrait is really uncomfortable. The sitter gets weirded out, I get weirded out... probably because of all the machismo of prison life. So, the ¾ view allows the sitter to feel relaxed and allows me to focus on the task.

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Did anyone ever ask you to help them draw? Did you ever teach anyone? 

I get asked for tips on a regular basis, which I love. Two years ago I was volunteering as an art instructor here on the veterans' unit. It was great! We turned it into a figure drawing class. One guy would get up on a table in the dayroom and the class would make gesture drawings. We made a lot of progress and some guys got really good! We used the #2 pencils and copier paper from the prison commissary. The session was weekly, an hour long for 12 weeks. and was very therapeutic for the vets AND me. During the beginning of the next 12wk session, one of the vets forgot to return a small watercolor set to the guard and the prison cancelled the class. But we ended up getting 14 good hours in before they gave us the axe! It was a real kick in the gut when it got cancelled, not just for me but for the 20 or so guys who really looked forward to that one hour of meditative distraction. Any respite from the daily stress of prison is like an oasis. 

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Considering you drew 500 sitters... has your perspective on the prison system changed? 

Yep. The majority of the guys I'm in here with, and thus the majority of my subjects, are black. It's counterproductive to sugarcoat that. I started to wonder why. It has everything to do with the way that minority and poor people are policed in their neighborhoods, the way they are sentenced, and the length of their sentence. I also learned a lot about which counties in Pennsylvania are sending the majority of us to prison. Sometimes it comes down to a particular judge in a particular county who is responsible for an inordinate percentage of state prison sentences. These are things I never would have considered prior to talking to my sitters. I came to realize that a lot of what is driving mass incarceration is a practice known as "split sentencing", which means a long period of probation after the prison sentence. At anytime during that parole and probation, a person can be yanked back to prison for any number of arbitrary reasons. A life on parole or probation doesn't resemble a normal law abiding life whatsoever. We live in constant fear of returning to prison, no matter how well we toe the Iine.

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