For nearly three decades, Janie Paul has made annual visits to almost all of Michigan's prisons to solicit and select artwork created by prisoners for exhibition in an annual show at the University of Michigan (U-M). Now, she's chronicled that extensive experience in a book, "Making Art in Prison: Survival and Resistance," which was recently named a 2024 Michigan Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.
 
Every year, Paul and a team of curators and volunteers from U-M's Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) visit 28 of Michigan's 32 prisons, selecting work for PCAP's Annual Exhibition of Artists in Michigan Prisons. Paul writes movingly about her extensive work with PCAP in "Making Art in Prison," which also features work by many of the artists Paul has known and worked with over the years, alongside short statements by those artists about their lives and artistic practices. 

Paul says her prison visits are "really, really intense, emotionally and intellectually and artistically — in every way."
 
"It's just wonderful to meet artists and talk to them," she continues. "And it's very emotional, also, to see people that you've known for, say, 20 years. I've known certain people for a long, long time. I just see them once a year, and I care about them, and I respect them."

The selection visits are a "compressed experience," Paul says. "There's nothing frivolous."
 
With only a limited amount of time available and a dozen to two dozen artists waiting for feedback, she says, "you don’t bullshit around. … You’ve got to get to the point."
 
Paul’s late husband, Buzz Alexander, launched PCAP at U-M in 1990. Paul moved to Ann Arbor in 1995 to join the project (and Alexander) as a co-collaborator, and to help found the Annual Exhibitions.
 
In her book, Paul writes that her goal, and PCAP's, "is to be in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in prison, creating a space in which they can grow and thrive; we endeavor to bring the art they produce into the world so that citizens outside of prison can see incarcerated people as intelligent, creative, and multifaceted, a critical step in ending mass incarceration in the United States."
 
For its first annual exhibition, the PCAP team displayed 77 works of art made by 60 artists from 16 different prisons. Those numbers have increased with each subsequent year. Most recently, Paul writes, about 700 artworks by more than 400 different artists have been exhibited.
 
While incarcerated artists can’t attend the exhibition itself, of course, PCAP has made a practice of sending packets to each artist. Among other materials, these contain a copy of a guest book, a letter informing them if their work has sold, and a list of all works displayed, with awards indicated.
 
In "Making Art in Prison," Paul writes that both PCAP and the Annual Exhibitions are "based on unconditional kindness toward the artists," a stance taken in direct opposition to the correctional system. 

"We deliberately extend generosity, curiosity, validation, and support to people living in prisons," she continues. "Whether or not they ‘deserve’ to be treated with kindness is irrelevant."
 
Elsewhere, Paul writes, "I do not include the events that brought the artists into prison unless they themselves write about this in their story. They do not ask us to tell them the worst thing we have ever done, so we don’t ask them."
 
"All I did was the art show"
 
Danny Valentine first heard about PCAP on the same day he’d planned to commit suicide. He’d been handed a 30-year prison sentence, his wife had left him, and he had little to no money or other outside resources.
 
"I had given up," he says. 

He had a plan in place and, in case it failed, two back-ups: a hot shot of heroin and a noose he’d managed to braid himself.
 
Valentine was housed on the fourth gallery, or story, at Jackson Central Complex, in Jackson, Mich. but climbing would give him access to the rafters, adding another story. 

"I had seen people dive off the fourth gallery and live, and I didn't want to live," he says.
 
On his way to the evening meal, Valentine planned to jump from the rafters.
 
"I was waiting for chow time … when they break the doors open and have mass movement," he says. "Now, that's also when they pass out the mail, right before [the doors open]."
 
Then – "like an angel," Valentine says – a letter was tossed into Valentine's cell. The letter, which turned out to be from Alexander, invited Valentine to submit artwork to the very first Annual Exhibition of Artists in Michigan Prisons. Valentine says he still doesn’t know how Alexander learned his name. 
 
"I still get choked up thinking about that," he says.
 
Valentine had made art before he got involved with PCAP. Since his childhood, he’d enjoyed drawing and sculpting.
 
"I was always an artist," he says.
 
But after he received the letter, Valentine got disciplined about his practice — and, he says, "I got really good at it."

A drawing by Janie Paul.
After that, he says he "lived for" PCAP. 

"I didn't do anything else," Valentine says. "All I did was the art show and sit in the hole."

“Something that everybody wanted”
 
"Making art is work," Paul writes in "Making Art in Prison". 

"It may involve flights of inspiration and great joy, but it doesn’t happen without intelligence and discipline," she writes. "In prison, meaningful work is rare."
 
While the existential benefits of meaningful work can’t be overstated, the practical benefits, especially in prison, are crucial.
 
Incarcerated people are usually assigned a job in prison — anything from cleaning or working in a kitchen or laundry to tutoring or clerking, depending on their education and employment experience. But they are generally paid less than $1 an hour for their labor, according to Paul.
 
Still, prisoners are expected to pay for many materials, such as coffee, snacks, toiletries, and stamps, with their own money. If they have family or friends on the outside, they can deposit funds in their loved ones’ accounts — but not everyone does.
 
"There are many money-making hustles among prisoners," Paul notes — and "one of the few sanctioned ways to generate income is by making art and craft objects that are sold to and bartered with other prisoners," and even with guards.
 
According to Paul, the most popular forms of art to buy or sell in prison are greeting cards and portraits of loved ones. "Almost everyone wants to buy something handmade they can send home," she writes.
 
A personalized greeting card typically costs $3 to $5, while a portrait typically costs $70, though an experienced artist might pull in several hundred dollars, Paul writes.
 
Given this institutionalized market, Paul writes, "individual artists are motivated to become highly skilled and make their work stand out, often with feats of virtuosity."
 
She quotes an incarcerated artist, Robert Fitzner, who says: "There’s so many artists and hustlers in here — all at different levels and the one distinction is their quality of work. The one true currency we have in here is what we can do best, whatever that may be, and what we do better than others is what gives us that competitive advantage."
 
Talented artists can gain another advantage: the respect of guards and other prisoners, which can lead to better treatment.
 
Paul quotes another incarcerated artist, Alvin Smith, who describes the dynamic in this way: "An officer who has always treated you badly will see you painting in the day room through the glass. When they watch you creating something beautiful, you can literally see their facial expressions change. They ooh and aah and become kind to you. Then they start giving you preferential treatment."
 
"They have some pretty gruesome guys in there," Valentine says. "I mean, people that were just straight-up killers. [They] could kill somebody and lay down and take a nap afterward. They weren't bothered at all by it. And I could mingle freely with any one of these guys, because I had something that everybody wanted. They wanted a card for their loved ones. They wanted a portrait of their family member."
 
"I was just driven to get better"
 
In her book, Paul emphasizes how central decision-making is to making art. "Art," she writes, "is a sustained process of making decisions, one after another about materials, marks, textures, colors, shapes, and surfaces. A person can choose to be slow and methodical, or fast and spontaneous, to use established images or invent new ones."
 
This emphasis on choice comes in direct opposition to prison life, where almost nothing in a prisoner’s environment, from food to clothing to scheduling one’s day, is subject to choice.
 
Valentine spent much of his 30-year prison sentence in solitary confinement to avoid living in a cell with other people. (When he was forced to live with bunkmates, they frequently turned out to be violent; one tried to snap his neck while he was sleeping, Valentine says.)
 
During one stint in isolation, Valentine sculpted a four-and-a-half-foot-long mermaid from soap and toilet paper. He collected the soap from bits left behind in the showers, which he crushed into a Styrofoam cup and soaked to make pliable. He chewed scraps of toilet paper to produce something like papier-mâché.
 
He had to restart the sculpture several times after guards destroyed the meager materials he’d collected.
 
"They had certain guards that would just mess with you," he says. 

He stopped showering and going outside for each day’s allotted hour. Staying in the cell meant Valentine could protect his sculpture, which finally began to assume a recognizable shape.
 
When the guards realized what Valentine was working on, "they just left me alone," he says, "…because [they were] really impressed by how I was managing to do this."
 
"I had to create something," Valentine says. "That was how I did it."

Artwork by Danny Valentine. 
Though Valentine made a number of sculptures during his time in prison, he worked most often in colored pencil, producing remarkably vivid, photo-realistic drawings.
 
He says the decision to work in colored pencil came naturally. A friend brought him a set of Prismacolor pencils, and the booklet that came with them, so the pencils were one of the first art materials that Valentine had immediate access to.
 
For another thing, Valentine says, the clean-up and tear-down process for colored pencils is much simpler than, for example, acrylics. That's an important factor in an environment where corrections officers may be conducting impromptu searches or prisoners themselves may be rounded up and moved to different facilities without notice — both fairly common occurrences.
 
Valentine says he learned by "trial and error" — and by consulting the booklet that came with the colored pencils. 

"Everything I learned was from that little, bitty booklet," he says.

"I literally would play with the stuff and figure it out," he continues. "I kept doing it and I kept making mistakes and I kept improving. … I was just driven to get better."

Solidarity, not charity
 
"What we're not doing is charity work," Paul says. "You know, if you say, ‘I'm going to help somebody,’ the emphasis is on the person who is receiving the help. …We're seeing ourselves more in solidarity with people."
 
The PCAP team and incarcerated people "come together in a relationship of equality," Paul writes in "Making Art in Prison." "We, on the outside, are not there to ‘bring culture’ or to teach in any traditional manner. We are there to facilitate a space of freedom and expression."
 
Paul says her own art has been influenced by the incarcerated artists she has met through PCAP. 

"In general, it's made me less concerned about the art world in 'the world,'" she says, using a term incarcerated people use for the world outside prison.
 
Paul adds, "The content of what I'm doing now has been influenced by the grief of being in touch with so many people who are living and dying in prison and the grief of our general carceral system."
 
"Art-making is a form of resistance," she says. "Art-making allows people to become the subject of their world, rather than an object in the prison environment."
 
After Valentine was released from prison, he went to see Paul in her U-M office, a scene she describes in her book. He moved upstate for a time, but when Alexander was diagnosed with dementia, he returned, moving in with Paul and Alexander to act as caretaker. (Their relationship was beautifully described in The Atavist.) Alexander died in 2019. Valentine and Paul live together still. 

"He’s my partner," Paul says.

Janie Paul and Danny Valentine. 
For now, Valentine says, he’s choosing to focus on restoring old motorcycles — a task not unlike sculpting, he says.
 
"All this — everything we see — is art," he says. "I don't care where you go on this planet. Everywhere you go, you see artwork. It’s either graphic art or portraits or sculpture. Every home has art in it — somewhere, there’s art. Even if they don't have it hanging on the wall, there's a logo on a milk carton in their refrigerator."
 
Those interested in donating to PCAP can do so here.
 
Those interested in volunteering with PCAP can fill out the following form to proceed.

Natalia Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and others.

Photos courtesy of Janie Paul and Danny Valentine.