An Interview With Rendering Mass Incarceration: LEONARD JEFFERSON

Born in Pittsburgh, Leonard Jefferson is a Providence-based artist who survived almost 40 years behind bars in PA and the Adult Correctional Institute (ACI) in Cranston. In 2019, the state Supreme Court overruled the life without parole sentence, which had been imposed unlawfully, and Jefferson was released from the ACI.

Jefferson is a lifelong, self-taught artist working in a variety of 2D media. His art frequently depicts people and incorporates text and political messages. Jefferson was prolific throughout his incarceration, despite his art being confiscated multiple times. He has been featured in exhibits both while in prison and afterwards, including at the RISD Museum, University of Pittsburgh’s Images Exhibition (where he received the Blue Ribbon award), Pittsburgh’s Federal Reserve Bank, the Human Rights Coalition of Philadelphia, the Black Biennial at RISD this past spring, and “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Incarceration” at Brown last fall.

In this interview, Jefferson talks about his artistic process, creating in spite of surveillance, and the role of art in social movements.

LJ: The outside inspiration I got was sometimes things that I saw on television. And from National Geographic.

SF: Did being an artist affect your interpersonal relations at all? Did it set you apart from other people in prison?

LJ: It set me apart because I was into what I was into, and I can’t carry on with the other stuff when I’m trying to concentrate on the canvas and paper.

SF: How many hours a day would you work on art?

LJ: Sometimes zero. Sometimes 12, 15.

SF: Could you talk more about the materials you had?

LJ: I had oil paints. And I didn’t actually start working with the ball points in Rhode Island in prison. I started doing that in the 1990s when I was in prison in PA, ‘cause I could not get access to canvas paints.

SF: The paints were given at the ACI?

LJ: Yes, in the seventies, in the eighties. The jail then was quite different from what it is now. You were able to have access to greater things. I built some silkscreens there. I had all the chemicals I needed. Now, you’re not allowed to have anything flammable. I actually had X-Acto knives; the jail was quite different back then. They had like a woodworking shop, they were making furniture. One guy was making mirrors. I was doing silk screens, and I’d etch the glass on the mirrors that he was making.

SF: Did you just keep all of your art in your cell? I imagine that filled up the whole space.

LJ: Yeah, the cell was small. Everything was confined.

SF: Were you able to have any outside exhibitions while you were incarcerated?

LJ: I had an exhibition at RISD in the early eighties, and also at the Providence Public Library. The director of the Arts and Corrections program, Ms. Roberta Richmond, was connected with the Rhode Island Council of Arts and she made all that possible.

SF: Your art was labeled as “racial art” and seized at one point. Could you just talk about that and what it felt like to have your art surveilled?

LJ: Yeah, that is exactly how I see it, and that’s exactly what it is. They have to as a security matter keep you from, let’s say, ‘causing chaos’ in the prison, they have to pay close attention to what they hear people talking about and what they see people doing.

I’ve been told by many different correctional officers that my artwork was racist. And I don’t think that it is racist. If you see a person watch other people fight, that doesn’t make him violent, that simply makes him an observer of violence. And the artwork that I produce is not racist, it’s just a reflection of what I am seeing. The person who lives on a farm, who’s constantly exposed to nature, trees, birds, and meadows, that’s what he would paint. But being a person of color who is continually under attack for that color and just reporting on that does not make me racist. Actually, I don’t think that there is such a thing as a black race or a white race or a yellow race or a red race or any color you name. That’s not a race. The race is the human race.

SF: How many times was your art taken away? And how did you go about getting it back?

LJ: Every time something was confiscated, I managed to get it back. When I was locked up in PA was the first time something was confiscated from me, and it had to be in the early 2000s because one of the things that was complicated for me was a portrait of Osama bin Laden. And they didn’t like that. And another one was something that I called “Sista-Matized,” which is in there on the wall and also in the book.

SF: Yeah, I think I saw that one. Wait, they didn’t like the Bin Laden one, ‘cause, was it like supporting him or something? Or like, they just didn’t agree.

LJ: They just didn’t like it. There is no set standard that a correctional officer uses when they come into your cell to determine what is acceptable. They just go from however they feel—‘I don’t like this, so I’m going to take it.’ I had a guy come into my cell one time and I had a metal watch band. And this guy, he just said, ‘oh, this is mine.’ And he was going to take it, keep it. And I had to argue with him to get it back. But with the Bin Laden thing and the “Sista-Matized” in PA, I had to go to court. And the court made the Department of Corrections give me

“Sista-Matized” back. And they made them give me the Bin Laden drawing back, but they would not allow me to keep it in the prison, so I had to send it out.

SF: After that, did you have to purposely conceal things or deal with legibility in any way?

LJ: I just kept on doing what I felt like doing.

And then in RI in [2015], I was doing a drawing [of the July 2015 shooting of Samuel DuBose by police officer Ray Tensing], and that image was actually in the newspaper. And [the C.O.] told me, “That’s racist.” I said, “Racist?” Here it is in the newspaper. So he didn’t take it.

Then on October the 27th, they raided my cell [and I was placed in Solitary Confinement for the next 20 days]. They said that I was making drawings of correctional officers being assaulted by inmates, which once again, it was nothing like that.

And they said that the carbon paper that I had was contraband. But I bought that carbon paper from the commissary in the prison in PA. Now, when the sheriffs brought me to RI from PA, they laid everything that I had on the counter, and the correctional officer looked through it and sent me on my way with the carbon paper. They search everything that’s in your cell a couple times a week, so all the way from November of 2013 until October of 2015. Suddenly this carbon paper becomes contraband. So they give me a misconduct report and they immediately put me in segregation, or the hole, or whatever you want to call it.

SF: How does your experience being incarcerated affect your art now that you’re out of prison?

LJ: Well, I wouldn’t say that it has changed at all. ‘Cause I’m connected with organizations who do a lot of prison reform work. So I feel, in a way, imprisoned, because of the last thing I did. A lot of people who get over prison forget all about it, and put it behind them and act like it didn’t happen. And then when they go back to prison, they find out conditions have gotten worse ‘cause they didn’t take the time to advocate and change things to improve the conditions of prison.

If you wanna look at it from a selfish point of view, I understand that I could be re-imprisoned, literally at the drop of a hat. For nothing. Which is why I was in prison before—for nothing. Somebody happens not to like you, right? And they abuse that authority they have to imprison you. Just like the police are killing people literally at the drop of a hat for nothing. I mean, that’s the reality.

SF: What is it like to receive more recognition for your art recently?

LJ: It’s good because people are taking interest, more now than ever before, of what’s actually happening. You have what they’re calling the age of mass incarceration. Whereas in 1980 there were something like 300,000 prisoners in the entire United States of America, today there’s over 2 million.

People are understanding that the prisons have become a business, and it’s what it has always been. It’s for control over an unwanted population. And there’s a genocide actually going on because they’re taking these young guys and you’re giving them 20, 30 years in prison, and they’re in their baby-making prime, but they’re not making babies because they’re in prison. There’s also the demographics. America is a white-majority population country now, but that is due to change in something like 2035. It would’ve flipped over long before 2035 if they wouldn’t have started locking them guys up. And they’re locking the women up, too. Women are the fastest growing group of prisoners in the country.

But it’s good to get recognition and see that people are interested in what’s actually going on in prison. ‘Cause as long as they’re not interested, no change is going to be made.

SF: Do you see yourself working within ‘outsider art’? Or more in the institutional art world? Or somewhere in between? How do you feel about your art being associated with ‘prison art’ versus existing outside of that category?

LJ: I think that art is art, period. The art that is produced in prison is just as valid as the art that is produced by people who have gone to school and got degrees. I haven’t been to any schools. Recently, since I’ve been out of prison, I’m sitting at the table and everybody there is a doctor, has a PhD, and I don’t have a bachelor’s training. It’s like, ‘Whoa, where am I at?’ In that way I feel like I’m an outsider. Because I haven’t gone to school for this.

It’s good to be able to deliver the message, to move up into people who are interested in making changes that need to be made to make the prison system more humane.

SF: Do you have a community of artists who are previously incarcerated?

LJ: It’s more kind of like I’m on my own. But I am a member of DARE which is an organization of people who have been in prison. You know, we deal with social issues.

SF: Yeah. Like Stop Torture RI.

LJ: Yeah, and Bail on 32 is another campaign we have going on.

See, I’m on probation, right. And say I got off the bus from work. But in between the bus stop and where we are now, there’s a bunch of guys and they’re drinking, they’re gambling, okay? So when I walk by there, the police roll up and they arrest everybody, including me. Everybody who’s out there is gonna be released after the police take them down to the station and book them, they’ll be released. But me, because I am a person who’s on probation, I won’t be released. I have to do a mandatory 10 days—which often turns to 30—in prison without bail, and I’m not allowed to get out from bail, so I’m gonna lose my job. And I haven’t done anything. I just walked by.

We’re trying to get that changed, so that when you get arrested you have to have actually done something that’s a violation of the conditions of your probation. That’s what Bail on 32 is about.

SF: What do you see as the role of art and prison abolition in reform?

LJ: Art plays a very important role. One of the things that we’re also working on in there is shutting down that maximum security building. It was built in the 1870s. It was antiquated, and in 1977 the U.S. District Court said that the building was unfit for human habitation, that it must be closed—it could no longer be used to house prisoners.

I was surprised to see that it was still open when they brought me back to Rhode Island. I was actually a litigant in the court suit in 1977 that brought about the decision that that building was to be closed. So at DARE now we are still focusing on trying to get them to close that building to build a new prison.

There’s an argument going on because the abolitionists don’t want them to build a new prison, but they want to continue housing people in conditions that are unfit for human habitation. The health and sanitation doesn’t meet the codes, right? Everything is substandard. There’s mold everywhere. It’s freezing in one area and hot in another. No ventilation.

SF: I saw that some of your drawings depicted the black mold. It’s not like you can just take a picture from prison and post it, you know? So the art seems invaluable in that case.

LJ: Mm-hmm. I mean, you can see the black mold in there, you can smell it, you can taste it. You know, there are guys that are highly allergic to this stuff. So they refuse to lock in that cell. When I say lock in, I mean they wanna put all your property in and have you sleeping in that cell. And when they refuse to do that, they put them in Solitary.

SF: Are there times when art is not needed? When does the community need to show up physically versus through art?

LJ: I think that the art is always needed. Because art is one way to attract people, to get their attention and to educate the people about the problem that we’re trying to resolve. And when you go to the protest with the people you have the signs, which are speaking when you can’t speak. You can’t always be talking and being heard, but if you’ve got a sign, the sign is talking to the officials who you’re trying to reach.

SF: Sometimes people say, “Let’s give voice to these people through art,” rather than changing day-to-day realities. For example, putting art in museums can be a way of sterilizing it. How do you deal with the fact that people might just look at art and not actually change day-to-day realities?

LJ: It’s commonly said that those who are closer to the problem are best situated to cause change. So you take a guy, let’s say he’s a millionaire and he doesn’t have any social consciousness about himself at all, and he’s looking at someone who’s a poor person who’s in prison basically because of poverty and racism, right? Then he’s not gonna get the message and he’s not gonna communicate that message that was originally intended by the person who produced the work.

Some people don’t have the social consciousness that’s required to get involved, to try to improve situations. Other people do have that. So if art is put in a museum and it’s advertised properly so that it can attract the right people, if it’s put in its proper context and perspective about what it actually is and what it represents and what it is calling for, then that’s a good thing.

See Bulletin for ways to get involved in Stop Torture RI and DARE initiatives.