Let’s call him Jesus. He doesn’t want anybody to know where he was for 15 years, between 1985 and January of this year. He’s got a good job now and a family, so why jeopardize the good name he’s been building up? But he was in prison. He did something stupid and irrevocable as a kid, and he spent a lot of time in some of the toughest joints in Illinois.
Casa Aztlan has earned its reputation as an arts and culture center. With a sweep of her arm, Alvarez directs our attention to the vivid murals encircling the auditorium. “The murals you see on this floor went up in 1972,” she says. They’ve been reconditioned once already, and about two weeks ago volunteers began carefully detaching them from the walls to redo them again, this time on canvas. “The drywall,” Alvarez explains, “was actually starting to fall off the walls.”
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The Jaycees were first organized in an Illinois prison in the mid-80s at Menard, and the idea spread to other Illinois prisons where there were nearby Jaycees chapters willing to oversee the inmates. Each prison group had its own name, and the Pontiac inmates called themselves the Gaol Jaycees. Their charter stated that their activities must somehow benefit the outside community. Jesus became a board member.
“We sold mainly food, concessions,” Jesus says. “There were two yards at Pontiac and there was a shack by each yard. Pretty much all day long we sold pizzas and pops and ice cream from those shacks. The money went back to the community. We were not allowed to keep it for ourselves. One of our board members was a bookkeeper, and he dealt hand in hand with the accountant of the institution. Monthly they would sit down and open the books just to make sure everything was correct.”
Soon after the visit, the Gaol Jaycees sent Casa Aztlan a check for $500. “We bought a TV,” she says. “We bought kids’ supplies. After that, we got money again the following year.”
Jesus read every art book he could find in the prison library. He asked fellow inmates who painted for help. And he began to paint every day. “Practice, as with anything, makes you better,” he says. “I got the color schemes and everything. It just came. If you work hard enough at anything, you’ll be all right.”
“We talked about Casa Aztlan, what we do,” Alvarez says. “The artists talked about their mediums, how they work, how long they’ve been working, and how hard it is to get into the business. The artists answered questions. They looked at the inmates’ paintings and gave them tips. They told them how to build a portfolio so when they came back home they’d know how to present it. We came back with 24 paintings.”
