‘Dance,’ made with M&M dyes and eggshells

The paintings of convicted murderer Donny Johnson, who just had an exhibition in Mexico while he sits in a high-security prison, gives a new meaning to the prison slang ‘shiv.’

… he made a brush of his own hair, secured with thread to a rolled piece of paper. For color he uses M&M candies, applying the dyes to the backs of cards he buys at the canteen. [Link]

… he and two friends had stabbed an acquaintance to death after a party in San Jose, in a dispute over the sale of cigarettes laced with PCP… Nine years later Mr. Johnson was charged with the nearly fatal stabbing of one guard…

On Friday night, more than 500 people had jammed into a gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, to assess 25 of Donny Johnson’s small, intense works. There was sangria, as well as big bowls of M&M’s. By evening’s end, six of the postcard paintings had sold, for $500 each. [Link]

There’s something sad about a color palette limited by M&M colors. If Johnson could order desi sweets, he’d have bright green, sickly pink, silver foil, and a rainbow of other hues at his disposal:

He puts from one to five of the candies in each of the jelly containers, drizzles a little water in and later fishes out the chocolate cores, leaving liquid of various colors, which get stronger if they sit for a couple of days… “Grape Kool-Aid in red M&M color makes a kind of purple,” he wrote in a letter to a reporter not long ago. “Coffee mixed with yellow makes a light brown. Tropical punch Kool-Aid granules can be made into a syrup and used as a paint wash of sorts…” [Link]

If you’re feeling bereft of artistic inspiration, there are easy solutions, though none are very good for your Q index:

Mr. Johnson is working in a rich tradition of art produced in prisons and asylums… “Time and the availability of time,” she said, “has an awful lot to do with an explosion of expression.” [Link]

In other prison-related news, a Roman prison has opened a call center to take business away from the subcontinent. Ironically, the desis manning their own call centers draw similar pay with similar constraints

Italy’s biggest phone operator, Telecom Italia, on Thursday presented its new call-centre in Rome’s largest prison, where 24 inmates are glued to a computer screen to answer thousands of requests for phone numbers and addresses every day… The detainees get paid 12 cents (8 pence) per call answered and on a normal day each one of them deals with around 200 requests for information…

“This may seem like a boring routine job, but for people who would otherwise spend the day sitting in our cells and doing nothing, it actually gives a sense to your life,” said 34-year old Salvatore Striano, who has been convicted for Mafia crimes and also works in the call-centre. [Link]