Living Like a Refugee: Peggy Diggs Takes a Design Problem to Prison

Conceptual artist Peggy Diggs was thinking about what it would be like to live as a refugee, moving from place to place with only a few belongings on her back. She had begun to think seriously about climate change and preparing for disaster. That meditation became a project called “WorkOut,” and it took her on a long, long trip — to a maximum-security prison, some intriguing collaborators, a lot of red tape and a gallery in Chelsea.

An artifact of her journey, on view at the Schroeder Romero Gallery in New York’s Chelsea district in April 2007, is a collapsible cardboard desk/workspace.

"WorkOut" originated from a story Diggs read in The Observer International in 2004, putting forth what probably sounded to many like crackpot warnings about the coming effects of climate change.

"A secret report, suppressed by U.S. defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer," wrote Mark Townsend and Paul Harris on February 22,

warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Even those who believe in global warming would probably have thought that it couldn't happen that fast – imagine a major city sinking into the sea within the next 15 years.

Click here or on the image to download an illustrated do-it-yourself instructions for making your own portable cardboard desk.

Then, of course, we met Hurricane Katrina. After the storm in 2005, New Orleans, Louisiana, was many feet deep in water and hundreds of its citizens died in the flood. A million residents from all over the Gulf Coast headed inland with whatever they could carry, jobless and homeless. Scientists on the Sunday morning TV talk shows pointed to global warming: The gulf waters were 90 degrees when Katrina struck, cranking the storm up to a Category 5. "Right now, because of global climate change," said Mark Fischetti, author of “Drowning in New Orleans,” on "Meet the Press" (8/4/05), "the Bush administration's own studies say we will get between one and three feet of sea-level rise worldwide because of our use of fossil fuels."

Back in 2004, Peggy Diggs had found the Observer predictions interesting. "It provided an image for me of people moving towards the interior of the U.S., the coasts flooded, and havoc everywhere," she wrote in her initial project description. "I thought this could lead possibly (this in my fantasy) to refugee-camp life in the U.S., people having to live close to the bone, moving frequently, packing up their necessities into small and mobile formats." It is chilling to learn how right she was.

Seeking Expertise on Life in Tight Places

Diggs became intensely focused on these images. In summer/fall 2004, through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, she created a project about disaster preparedness called "Readiness." She designed a series of eight layers that a person could wear, which would enable that person to carry all the supplies that Homeland Security, FEMA and the Red Cross indicate that a person needs to survive for three days.

Diggs continued to obsess on the ramifications of this chain of events: "Thinking about having to live in tight spaces, perhaps with objects serving multiple functions, and definitely having to be mobile, I thought about people already accustomed to tight living. Prisoners came first to mind." Incarcerated people have certain kinds of experience and knowledge that are of value to the rest of us, she surmised. She pondered the best way to mine that value and help prisoners give something back to society.

Through a partnership with the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, Diggs made arrangements to meet with a group of 15 men in maximum security at Graterford Prison outside Philadelphia. MAP had been working with these particular prisoners for some years, and when Diggs visited with them in January 2005 she found them eager to participate in her project. She obtained funding from Creative Capital Foundation to "explore notions of design and function of objects we’re all familiar with — with materials and expectations we have of them, concrete problem solving and design for particular groups of users."

Peggy Diggs on the way into Graterford Prison

After a required February prison orientation, Diggs visited the prison twice weekly throughout June and July, brainstorming with the men about their own particular cells and what it would take to make them more habitable. Their solutions tended toward compact, flexible furniture. They worked through rough model-making with cardboard and masking tape and then began collaborating with industrial designer Kreg Jones to talk about the designs in terms of usefulness, functionality, efficiency, aesthetics and materials options, and to compare the designs to similar items already on the market.

In September, they were ready to start finalizing designs and talk about legal issues of ownership and distribution of proceeds. It was at this stage that I was invited to spend two days in prison to help document the proceedings.

Art in the Big House

No matter how much you read about art in prisons, it's impossible to imagine until you have been there. And, having been there, it's my guess that there's no point in generalizing about the field. Each situation in different.

Take my experience at Graterford: Many of the incarcerated project participants had been working with MAP for years, fabricating murals that are mounted in the city. After meeting them, I realized they couldn't possibly be "typical" inmates; Diggs calls them "hard-working artists" and they consider themselves "an elite group" with privileges they don't want to lose, which keeps them on their best behavior.

Here's how MAP describes the prison program:

For the past [five] years, MAP has held art classes with inmates at the State Correctional Facility at Graterford. Each week muralists meet with inmates to create murals on large pieces of "parachute" cloth. Once the inmates have painted the pieces of cloth, they are applied with an adhesive gel to a wall in a community. This method of mural making allows inmates to give back to the community. The goal of the Prison Program is to use mural making as a medium of self-exploration and rehabilitation. Bringing art to Graterford offers some inmates the opportunity to communicate a message of hope to the community in a tangible and meaningful way that would otherwise not exist.

MAP is one of six work programs at Graterford that are intended to benefit the community; they also include a Wheelchair Restoration Program and Canine Partners for Life, which trains service and companion dogs for people with disabilities. There are more than 160 "activities" in which inmates may participate at the prison, and some include the arts. In addition to the MAP arts classes, there are art and writing contests, drama classes, jazz ensemble, music classes from the beginner to the master level, music theory, arts therapy, a prison literacy project and more.

But Peggy Diggs, it turned out, was unlike any other artist the Graterford men had worked with. She is well known for her public art projects using familiar, decorative, everyday objects such as wrapping paper, placemats, milk cartons, flags — "objects designed to domesticate a place or activity," as she describes them. But Diggs relates these everyday things to very personal disasters: domestic violence, AIDS, homelessness.

One of her best-known works originated in interviews with women in prison who had been convicted of murdering their abusing husbands. One of the women she interviewed said her activities were so limited that the only public place she was allowed to go was the grocery store. Diggs saw a need to connect with women unable to reach out for help. The result was the "Domestic Violence Milk Carton Project," in which a graphic message was printed on the sides of 1.5 million milk cartons and distributed across New York and New Jersey. The image was the silhouette of a hand superimposed with these words:

WHEN YOU ARGUE AT HOME DOES IT ALWAYS GET OUT OF HAND?
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, call:
1-800-333-SAFE .

Graterford is a maximum-security prison where many of the inmates are serving life sentences. Getting inside involves plenty of red tape, forms, tags, stamps and metal detectors. Walking down the bright, windowed hallway with Diggs, MAP's Jane Golden, Kreg Jones the designer, one of Graterford's activity directors and a few other outsiders, I felt nervous. Off to the left I could see men exercising in the yards between long barracks containing their cells. There were only a few women in view. It was hard to know where to put my eyes.

But once we were in an art environment, the two days I was at Graterford were quite comfortable. We met Diggs' class in a large auditorium where arts activities were going on in every corner. Small groups were busy with various kinds of projects, murals were being painted under the direction of a MAP artist in residence and live music floated pleasantly across the room. Prison activities personnel drifted in and out of the groups, talking to inmates and observing their progress. There was a uniformed guard on duty at the door leading back into the prison proper, but the downstage auditorium doors stood open to let in a breeze. It felt like a multipurpose room in a community college.

The Graterfit Group

Peggy Diggs kept a diary during her stint at Graterford, and in it she described her first impression of this group of incarcerated men.

Their names are Zafir, David, John, Tulio, Eddie, Tony, George, Suave, Cisco, Van, Spel and Charles. We met in a tiny room off the auditorium at the prison, and here is all I know about them: Zafir seems very thoughtful and serious, and has spent a lot of time in The Hole; David is a small Latino from Texas who is covered with tattoos and a huge burn scar on his left upper arm; John is bearded with glasses, the numbers guy, white, very into precision, an angry man; Tulio is a Puerto Rican who didn’t speak for an hour, and when he did he said, "A dog can be a wall," and it was entirely appropriate; Eddie is a sweet charmer; Tony sat next to me, a Latino man who pays close attention, and when he speaks, it’s only to me and not to the group; George is small and speaks up easily; Suave is huge and goes off on tangents; Cisco I can’t quite remember yet; Van is a tall white guy with glasses and long blond hair and he came in late, apologizing 3 times later; Spel is articulate, charming, a fabulous painter, and they say he is never going to get out; and Charles I also don’t quite place yet in the group.

She goes on to describe the various exercises she asked them to do, where they got interested and where she lost them. It is a fascinating read. The diary reveals dilemmas and tasks particular to visual art – a focus on objects rather than the focus on relationships that might occur in a theater program.

Diggs and the inmates donated the completed desks to clients at Riverview Home in northeast Philadelphia, a city-run care facility for elderly people who had been indigent and homeless. Above, a Riverview worker gives one of the desks a try. Photo by Peggy Diggs. Click here to see a slide show of images from the design process.

From the beginning, Diggs hoped that the prisoners' designs would be realized in manufacture and sale. She wanted their special knowledge to be manifest in the real world, to be useful. She had proposed this to the project's sponsors as a desired, planned outcome. The inmates were clearly excited that this was a possibility. They had agreed on a name for their collaboration – Graterfit Group — and saw it as a trademark for the products. They were considering a distinctive graphic design to appear on all Graterfit products, based on the look of prison tattoos.

The objects they had agreed on were basically three: a table/cube that could hold a variety of materials and perform many functions, a multifunctional bed unit, and a portable cupboard that could hang from a bunk bed (the root of the table/cube idea, which Tony actually had constructed for his cell). Diggs showed the men photos of the design models and Jones answered questions and provided advice on cost, volume, weight, convenience and adaptation.

Problems of Ownership and Collaboration

By this date, the project had reached a crucial stage. The incarcerated artists had come face-to-face with the dynamics of community collaboration: Whose ideas are being included? What happened to them (both the ideas and the men) in the process? Who owns the design? How will the products be fabricated and marketed? What will happen to the profits? Who will benefit?

As I watched them work on these problems, I witnessed a mature, patient dialogue. They listened and responded without interrupting. Speakers would occasionally obsess on a detail, but that made it sound like a conversation among any of the artists I had ever known. Here is a sample from my notes (I was forbidden to bring in a recorder or camera).

Suave: I don't like that tattoo design. It reminds me of prison.

DayDay (David): But isn't that the whole idea?

Kreg Jones: It's cool that you're doing art and being productive in here. Besides, tattoos are popular now.

Suave: Tattoos from prison draw a certain reaction. We don't want a label that will keep us in a category. Why say the product comes from prison?

Peggy Diggs: It's part of the story and the name. We can trademark the whole story. You guys are here, productive, you've learned to pass things along to people on the outside.

Suave: Do we have to say it comes from prison? That it's no good?

Jane Golden (MAP): It's important to people who see the murals around town. They are impressed.

Suave: When you hear DOC (Dept. of Corrections), you know it's the Big House. How do you deal with people who think prisoners shouldn't be doing art, that they should just be locked up?

Golden: We face that every time we do a mural.

Diggs: Shall we revisit the idea of who these products are for? What if we made things especially to be used in prison?

Suave: I wouldn't want to contribute to prison life. When you get into designing for the street, it takes you out of prison.

John: Don't we want to make it more pleasant, less sterile? There's a penitent atmosphere in here, like a mausoleum. It's hard-edged. If you put people in a cell with hard corners, when they get out they're gonna turn hard corners. Like this furniture: Make the corners round.

[They describe their cells: They each have a TV, radio, metal cabinets, metal bunks, a desk that's "in the way," a swivel chair "nobody uses" – all metal.]

Spel: Who wants to make it comfortable? I want a constant reminder to get out.

Suave: I don't want to design nothing that has to do with prisons.

[They move on to discussing a particular stalemate in the collaborative process. One participant, absent today, has refused to cooperate.]

Suave: I understand his feelings, but it's a group decision. You get with the program or you're gonna miss out on the opportunity.

John: The idea is evolution.

Our little group of outsiders left the session on a high note, headed for a meeting with activities officers and the superintendent of the prison. Diggs gave a report on her project and asked some questions. It was here we saw the difference between what is imaginable and what is actually possible in a prison arts program. Though Graterford is undeniably supportive of the arts, it turned out that many of the objectives of Diggs' program might not be met. If products were manufactured they had to be made on the outside, and there could be no profits – for the men or anyone else. Most important, the idea that inmates might have ownership in a commercial project presented too many dangers. While their first names could be used to identify their participation in a prison arts program, it was going too far for them to own a stake in something that could present legal problems down the road, even a stake in the name "Graterfit."

"We have some guys in here who think like criminals," said someone at the table.

Diggs' requests to go on meeting with the men beyond her agreed-upon residency got tangled in red tape, too. There were many firm obstacles to possible "fraternization" with the prisoners. Her access, in person and through the mail, would be limited or screened. In any case, all activities related to the project would continue to be identified with MAP, or an entirely new approval process would have to be initiated – and that's always risky.

The next day, we took these decisions back to the men, and there ensued a most sophisticated and detailed examination of issues and alternatives. They completely agreed with the superintendent's warnings about the dangers of ownership.

"Law suits," said one man. "Lots of these guys never have nothing, so when it comes to something — You don't have obstacles until you come up with something. There's too many haters up in here."

Something to Lose

No matter what emerged from the project, they wanted there to be some way for them to get credit for the time they had spent on it. Some said credit would enhance their reputations as artists after they got out. Others, in for longer periods of time, wanted a letter of credit in their files.

If nothing else, they wanted to use this experience to gain ground for the arts program at Graterford. They were quite aware of its progress so far, made through the advocacy of Jane Golden and the artists of MAP. Thanks to the acknowledgement and documentation garnered by MAP, there is more art staffing and more art programming available. "Half the people in jail are doing some kind of art activity," said one man. They talked about their artwork getting outside the prison, placed in shows and in auctions that benefit social-justice programs. When Diggs asked them what their "art dreams" are, they said more training, more equipment, more media, international shows. John said he wished he had real oil paint, real turpentine. He wanted the experience of mixing his own paints.

Diggs asked them if they would like to continue to work together with her, and if so, what they would do. They saw the problems they had caused by expecting too much, by being too innovative, and they looked for something already approvable, "something that we know will fly through without all the lawyers." They told Diggs how much they value working with children from a local church, who come to the prison on Wednesdays to do art activities with them, like decorating tee shirts. They came up with an idea for making shirts with slogans indicating their wish to protect children, shirts that could be sold, with the proceeds going to child safety groups.

In closing that day, Diggs asked the men to look back over the project and describe what they did. Individuals recounted every step of the project. They said they valued the evolution of their ability to collaborate and they thanked her for taking them "to the next level."

Suave turned the tables on Diggs by asking, "When you first came in here, what was your perception of the group and what has changed in your personal life?"

"After my presentation in January, I left here in tears," answered Diggs. "I was so moved. The women I interviewed in prison had prepared me for the meanness of men. I had the picture of foaming-at-the-mouth people who would hurt me the minute I came in. But I came in and you looked at my work, really got it and asked great questions. I was really sorry to leave."

On our way out of the auditorium that day, we noticed some of their individual paintings propped up on a table, waiting to be viewed. We congratulated them and Diggs gave a small critique. Though I wasn't allowed to speak to individual prisoners, I did have a word with Suave. I told him I was impressed with their investment in art.

He said their experience with art at the prison had made them "changed people" and they would never do anything that would place the program in jeopardy. "We're an elite group. These guys won't blow up. They have too much to lose."

Later over coffee, I asked Diggs what value she saw in the project and others like it. She told me the artist Felipe Ehrenberg once said, "Art is an excuse."

"Art is an excuse for voices to come forward," she said. "Art is an excuse for me to gain access to populations and places I might not have had. It causes things to happen to people that make them reveal themselves. It's a tool, not an end. It can be a tool for removing rage. It can give you authenticity in a public conversation."

And I realized that no matter what came of "WorkOut," something had already been gained by all. I thought of something Spel said when he was talking about acknowledgement for the artwork they do in prison.

"Everything counts."

Epilogue

“WorkOut” was finally finished in February 2007. The solution was a cardboard desk and storage unit with movable parts painted in five colors and decorated with images. The inmates gave up on the idea of commercial manufacture or making money from the project, either for themselves or for a nonprofit organization serving victims of violent crimes. The red tape at the prison was just too thick. Instead, Diggs and the inmates made and decorated the desks themselves and donated them to clients at Riverview Home in northeast Philadelphia, a city-run care facility for elderly people who had been indigent and homeless.

“We had a two-week public exhibition of five of the desks, each painted with a different design,” Diggs wrote in her diary,

along with some documentation of the process we all went through. This was held in the Broad Street Ministry, a community-oriented congregation right on the Avenue of the Arts. During the opening, it had been arranged that two of the inmates would call in and be able to speak with people in attendance by speaker phone. Even the mother of one of those men was there.

The project was covered by Philadelphia’s City Paper (10/12/06), the Philadelphia Inquirer (10/16/06) and Public Radio International’s Studio 360. (You may download a podcast of the show, “IKEA Behind Bars” at the Studio 360 Web Site.)

Linda Frye Burnham is a writer who is co-director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network. She was the founder of High Performance magazine.

Links for this article

The Observer: “Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us”:
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1829559,00.html

Mark Fischetti on "Meet the Press":
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/

Capital Times article about "Readiness":
http://www.madison.com/tct/features/stories/index.php?ntid=37562&ntpid=2

City of Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program
http://www.muralarts.org/about

Peggy Diggs' Web site:
http://www.williams.edu/humanities/pdiggs/

The Domestic Violence Milk Carton Project
http://www.creativetime.org/citywide/past_proj/diggs.html

Creative Capital Foundation:
http://www.creative-capital.org/

City Paper, “Confined Inspiration”:
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2006/10/12/Confined-Inspiration

Philadelphia Inquirer, “Informed Designs for Tight Spots”:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmtpi/is_200610/ai_n16971632

Studio 360, “IKEA Behind Bars”:
http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2007/03/09

Original CAN/API publication: March 2007