WITHIN THE CONFINEMENT OF a prison cell, creativity is a survival mechanism. Artists wrest images from the deepest centers of their hearts and souls during the stifling sameness of days—or years—spent in incarceration.
It’s a “make do” kind of art, particularly for those without access to traditional materials like paints, canvas, paper, or brushes. Prisoners use whatever materials they can, including paños, which are among the most common forms of artwork made in New Mexico prisons. (“Paño” is Spanish for handkerchief or cloth.) As an art form, paño-making is believed to have originated among Chicano prisoners in the Southwest in the 1940s. Handkerchiefs are a common surface for two-dimensional artwork, but so are bedsheets and pillowcases, which can be cut up and used to trace images from newspapers and magazines, or repurposed as a canvas for free-form art-making.
To sacrifice a small source of comfort—a cheap bedsheet—for the sake of self-expression shows a great need to assert the human spirit. At the Museum of International Folk Art, in Santa Fe, the current exhibition Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy: A showcases the talent and creativity of the incarcerated while changing the rules of how exhibitions are mounted.
