Prisoners’ Inventions, written and illustrated by Angelo in collaboration with Temporary Services. Half Letter Press, Chicago, 200 pages, 2020. ISBN: 9781732051423. Paperback, $20
If you’re looking for conventional prison art, this book isn’t the place. No warrior princesses or hands holding bars here. But if you are interested in the incredible creativity that incarceration can generate, this book is a good place to start.
In the first instance, there is the creativity of “Angelo,” the one-time California prison inmate who made the drawings featured here and who is responsible for most of the text. His sketches are both interesting and entertaining.
But even more impressive are the ingenious inventions of the book’s title, all of them solutions to the privations of prison life that Angelo encountered or, in a few cases, at least heard about. They range from papier-mâché dice to a wall socket cigarette lighter to a toilet ice chest, each carefully diagrammed and described by Angelo.
The creative leaps involved in solving ordinary problems in an extraordinary environment give this work much of its oomph. But not every invention is functional. The chapter devoted to arts and crafts includes entries on tattooing and folded-paper picture frames, as well as how to create art supplies in the absence of conventional materials. Plus, there is a page of one of Angelo’s own masterpieces, a facsimile vintage Coca-Cola machine that the auto body shop instructor asked him to make for an open house.
It should be noted that this is one of the few art books that comes with a warning to its readers not to try any of these things at home.
The book is a collaboration of Angelo, who died in 2016, and the Chicago-based Temporary Services group, which has produced many publications and artistic collaborations over the last few decades. “Temporary Services does not observe a meaningful distinction between art and other forms of everyday creativity,” they say, and the works this book illustrates are great examples of that principle.
This review originally appeared in The Outsider magazine, published by Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.