Portfolio: Billy Brown
(intended for publication in now-cancelled Arthur No. 26)

The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor will present its 12th Annual Exhibition of Prison Art opening March 27, featuring more than 300 works of art by over 200 artists. Longtime participant Billy Brown’s work caught the eye of Arthur’s art directors for its wholly unique style of energetic lines, warm kaleidoscopic palette, and obsessively detailed textures. The work’s dense pencil-work and heavy patterning give the appearance that one is looking at richly woven textiles.

With the assistance of The Prison Creative Arts Project founder Buzz Alexander, program coordinator Emily Harris, and the cooperation of the warden where Billy is currently incarcerated, we were able to ask Billy a few questions about his work.

Billy began making art in 1995 and has exhibited his work in every PCAP exhibition since the first one. When asked about the origins of his work’s style, he explains, “I was in an art program at Ionia Maximum Facility. The Art Teacher told me I had to sit down and come up with something of my own. With the help of the good Lord and me not giving up, came ‘Billy Art.’” He draws his inspiration from “making people happy with my art” and explains that “when one learns art, he learns a lot.” Each of Billy’s works are clearly the result of hours, if not days and weeks, of intense and focused drawing and he describes the healing process of art as one of “patience” and “understanding” where he “can learn about myself and others, and you make changes in your life. ‘Cause you just don’t get up and do things, you have to sit down and think about what you are going to put on that paper. So it becomes a part of the way you look at life, and go about life.”

In addition to his art, Billy says he “came up in the church” and loves to sing gospel music, desribing it as “a healing in itself.” When asked if there’s anything he would like to share with the readers of Arthur magazine, he says he “would like our society to know this art program has been a blessing to me and I believe I can say for other prisoners also.“

You can learn more about PCAP and see more of Billy Brown’s art at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/pcap/