March 31, 1985-San Antonio Express-News

Art penetrates prison walls

Art is the lifeline of all peoples, be they of any culture or race. Art is a human social service as well as the means for the expression of our humanity. It is that salient definition that spiritually helps us promote our uniqueness. It is that mirror that we use to feel comfortable within our ambience.

All societies use the arts to consolidate their population into a cohesive organism that will promulgate these values that assure continuity. Such a continuity is important if the social system is to prevail. There is no argument that can be waged against such an arrangement, for survival of the species is uppermost in the minds of all beings.

This phenomena is very much alive and operative in all segments of society, within all strata and institutions, it is vital for survival.

Within our compacted and multi-faceted society, we see it operate on many levels. Children become what they become in terms of the art images they consume, asserting those values that move them.

We are all affected to some degree by the images we confront daily. We learn through our experiences how best to react or act within any event.

If our environment has strewn positive images in our paths, we shall gravitate toward positive auto-defintions. If, on the other hand, we have been given negative images of ourselves to abstract and internalize, then we shall respond negatively to the human and social condition we were born into.

Oftentimes, person with self-negating sentiments internalized over a lifetime will act out by violating the law. Much of the time, these persons had low esteem and a sense that they could not belong within the society they were born into. As illogical as it might seem to others who feel a vested interest in societal norms, the lawbreaker can quite probably be stating that the outward symbols and values do not pertain him or her.

These persons wind up in either dead-end jobs, underemployed or unemployed and often in jails or prisons. A horrendous loss to themselves and to society.

New trend

Fortunately, a new trend has been quietly taking place within the last one and a half decades. Programs have been created inside jails and prisons that are designed to foster positive self images via the arts.

Experiments in such diverse places as Leavenworth and the Texas Department of Corrections have utilized creative writing classes, as well as classes in visual arts, drama and, to some extent, courses in the humanities.

As society has advanced, creating even more sophisticated technologies, many thinkers have realized that human potential is too valuable to waste, for within each mind can there be another definition for the meaning of life.

The hours of pain within our jails can also be turned around into hours of questioning that might spur new insights into the human condition. We can all point to many fine works written in dungeons and prisons. Journals that have opened the doors of our minds helped us perceive that intelligence is sometimes distorted by privation.

Graduation

It was both a pleasure and an insightful experience to have attended the G.E.D. (high school equivalency) graduation last week at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center--the county jail.

Mr. Price, director of human services, spoke of the will to succeed that must be honed by the graduates if they are to make meaningful use of their newly acquired educations. Very importantly, he also spoke of projections in their educational programs that will lead toward the creation and development of creative writing classes that could culminate in publication.

Some of the students had radiant smiles, others were seriously considering what it could mean to their futures. The majority, I venture to say, seemed to realize that this could be a way to assure themselves a future.

Perhaps some even had visions of grandeur, thinking that by learning how to write and publish they could become successful and economically well off.

Some of them might just become well off, but each one will at least acquire a different self image--the kind of selfhood that might have been lacking in their lives.

There will be some solid dividends to society, the inmate and the inmates' families if good art and writing courses are instituted. This will be especially so if ways can be found to publish their works, exhibit their art and establish an on-going dialogue with artist outside those gray walls.

The raw angers of prison life can be channeled into works of art that can help youth understand that there are better venues for self-expression. Conversely, the inmate will begin to sublimate anger while expressing it and then analyzing what went awry in his thinking and responses to everyday problems.

I do not propose that art is the ultimate panacea, that it will solve all problems, but it can be argued that all persons need something that involves them in a creative sense of self. We need to celebrate the beauty of life, not just bemoan the plethora of problems plaguing society.

Every corner of our society, within all the crannies where people exist--these are all laboratories for exploring the intricacy of thinking about what life can mean.

There might just be another O. Henry residing at Bexar County Jail.