LIVE FROM THE CELL BLOCK
Will Livingston and His Silk Screen Machine
The remarkable story of Will Livingston and the equally remarkable body of work he created in the most unlikely circumstance — a prison cell.
The following is an excerpt from Live From the Cell Block, due out April, 2022.
My name is Will Livingston and I am prisoner number 607598 in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. On April 16, 2010, I experienced probably the second worst day of my life: the day an Oklahoma judge sentenced me to 40 years in prison on a charge of first-degree manslaughter. Just 18 months prior to that, I endured the worst day: the day I killed a young man while driving drunk not far from my home in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I had run out of whiskey that October afternoon and in a blackout state, I decided I needed another bottle. I don’t remember hitting Joseph with my car. I don’t remember the police coming to my door. I barely remember the fingerprinting, the statement I gave, the mug shot I took. I emerged from my drunken state hours later, while sitting in a county jail cell. A few weeks later, my parents took me to rehab where I remained until I went before the judge.
“…I worked as a printmaker’s assistant for Universal Limited Arts Editions (ULAE). Little did I know that twelve years later, when faced with a jail cell devoid of music — and any instrument — I would rely on the same skill.”
Since the day I plead guilty, I have spent most of my time in the halls of the Joseph Harp Correctional Center — a medium-security, red brick, “open-yard” building surrounded by triple links of barbed wire, cows and a rolling, sleepy stretch of land about 20 miles South of Norman, Oklahoma, where the University of Oklahoma has its main campus. Before coming to prison, I had been a musician. During my youth, my college years, my marriage and even through my divorce, music sustained and even consumed me. When I wasn’t playing my guitar, I would often sit in a room, drink whiskey and listen to new and old vinyl on the record player — it was my favorite pastime. As the nights wore on into day, I would sometimes pull out a canvas and start painting. It was a hobby that served me well in Summer 1998 when, while my then-wife studied Art History near New York City, I worked as a printmaker’s assistant for Universal Limited Arts Editions (ULAE). Little did I know that twelve years later, when faced with a jail cell devoid of music — and any instrument capable of making it — I would rely on the same skill. Only this time, instead of a nice, clean canvas and brushes, I had a pencil and whatever scrap of paper I could find.
At first, my work was dark: legions of faces, representing the men who surrounded me in the prison — thin men with distressed expressions, old men with mouths agape, thick men with bemused visages and young men looking despondent. My dad said he could look at those drawings for hours, trying to figure out how his only child was coping in prison. I had started serving my time in Lawton, a privately run prison where the only person I knew from the outside was strangled to death by his cellmate just a few doors down. I heard his screams while he died. Eventually, I received a transfer to Harp, and my work both lightened and broadened. In just a few days time, I stretched my parameters from depictions of prison life to Lichtenstein-esque portraits of my favorite people and various landscapes from my youth. My days as a print making assistant in New York had begun to rub off on me.
“Our work really took off when a friend and I designed and built our own printing press with a feature called “micro-registration”, a method of printing we re-imagined by adjusting the base of the press instead of the screen…”
But I still had important lessons to learn. When I first arrived at Joseph Harp, I found it difficult to relate to many of the other inmates. I was a kid who grew up in Nowata, Oklahoma on punk rock and skateboards and who had two loving parents willing to provide me with everything I needed to succeed in my chosen path. Painting was just something I did at three in the morning after I was tanked — not a vocation I took very seriously. One day, however, a fellow prisoner allowed me to check out a space he had acquired for woodworking. I kept visiting and showing him my work, and he eventually asked if I wanted to share his space. From this small room, we began a full time art guild. Soon, we had enough men involved, and I — with the help of a prison social worker, a friend and supporter to this day — approached the Joseph Harp warden about starting an art workshop. He approved it, and I started selling my paintings for money to purchase supplies. Soon, we had half a dozen guys rotating in-and-out of the art room painting and drawing and making things. Our work really took off when a friend and I designed and built our own printing press with a feature called “micro-registration”, a method of printing we re-imagined by adjusting the base of the press instead of the screen to achieve the desired image. With the new press, I have been able to put the music back into my art using my own designs and paintings, as well as images from magazines or printouts that friends and family mail me.
Generally, however, there are many challenges and obstacles to making art in prison. One is time. I work full-time for the prison library and sometimes finding a large enough block of time to get into the flow and get lost in the work can prove difficult with count times, lockdowns, meals and day-to-day rigors of prison life. For many inmates, space is a huge issue. Trying to paint cross-legged in a cell bunk can torture your back and knees, especially for us older guys. Also for most prison artists there is the challenge of finding an outlet to show or sell your work. If you don’t have a family member or friend willing to shop your stuff around or put it online, you really don’t know what to do with it.
I have been incredibly lucky in my prison art career. My family has represented my art on the outside, at galleries, through festivals and online. To our surprise, people have really responded to my story. About three years ago, I decided to merge my love of music with my current undertaking and started designing and printing old school concert posters — not far off from the ones people see in Nashville at shops such as Hatch Show Print. Friends would write suggestions for concerts; I would pick the ones I wanted to design; and we would print about 25 full-color, signed and numbered prints to give out at each show for free. We called it the Prison Art Poster Project. People even started collecting them. But I also I wanted the project to have a greater purpose, so I added my story and a message of “Please Don’t Drink and Drive” to the back of each poster. By now, I’ve created 165 unique posters, and we’ve distributed them at shows in Oklahoma, New York, North Carolina, and Washington, DC — to name a few — with the help of family and volunteers.
I have also spent countless days working on paintings and other projects for charitable causes. These items are usually sold through silent auctions to help organizations such as the Special Olympics, Employment for the Disabled, the Messages Project and the Outsiders House Renovation. I love doing the concert poster project and the charity commissions because they provide a path to the outside world and a way to give back to the community and society I harmed when I took the life of another human being. All of this could never replace the person I killed through my negligence, but maybe it’s a way I can do something in his memory.
“Looking back, I figured there had to be some way to redeem my life…”
For eleven years now, I have been forced to consider daily the bad decisions I have made and the people I have hurt. Addiction took everything from my life; I am not alone. So many have made this same journey. But art has made all the difference in my mental health in this place. When I started this work, I never saw something greater in it. I simply wanted to engage with the world. Looking back, I figured there had to be some way to redeem my life, to express the years of evolving emotions and make some positive statement. Thankfully, I found it.
Live From the Cell Block (Brick of Gold), published in partnership with Justice Arts Coalition, is currently available for pre-sale. The official release date is April 1, 2022.
