For the longest time, the boxes had sat untouched in Lucy Fugate’s basement.
It’s hard to say exactly why she never bothered to check the contents before now, but stuffed inside were nearly two decades of yellow newspaper clippings, magazine articles and other mementos, including a pencil portrait of Fugate’s grandmother Pauline Wiggins.
Wiggins was the wife of Marvin E. Wiggins, superintendent of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm.
Her belongings arrived here in Vinings in 2015 about the same time Fugate’s parents moved to Atlanta after over 50 years in Jackson, Miss.
Fugate doesn’t know what made her do it, but sometime last year, she found herself rifling through some of the boxes.
The 1954 portrait of Wiggins by Parchman inmate Albert Lee stopped her cold.
“It was beautiful,” Fugate said.
As she read the newspaper clippings, Fugate discovered her grandmother was the brainchild behind a “hobby contest” in which prison inmates used waste materials to create various forms of art.
"She believed creativity was a wonderful outlet for them," Fugate said. "If they were able to show their talents to the outside world, it would not only boost their morale but give them something to focus on besides the hard labor they were required to perform."
The photographs and papers revealed a vast variety of inmate work, made from recycled material like cow bones, horsetail hair and cotton burrs.
Wiggins started the contest in 1948, two years after her husband became prison superintendent, with just 12 entries.
By the time the contest ended in 1956, there were as many as 800.
The more Fugate discovered in the boxes, the more she realized she needed to do something. But what?
“I kept thinking about how much this must have meant to the inmates to have a creative outlet, recognition by the ‘outside world’ for their talents, and to have the chance to make money while incarcerated,” Fugate said. “Extremely artistic herself, my grandmother recognized this as a dignifying outlet for the inmates who primarily worked in the cotton fields on the farm.”
She called Andrea Shelton, founder and president of HeartBound Ministries, a nonprofit organization supporting Georgia’s correctional staff and inmates.
Not only would it give HeartBound Ministries “a chance to showcase the often hidden and significant talents of many prisoners in our state,” she said, the sale of their art would benefit the agency’s Little Readers program, which allows children of incarcerated parents to see and hear their parent reading to them via DVD.
The women presented their idea to Homer Bryson, then commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections.
“He was immediately behind us,” Fugate said.
Now almost a year later, Fugate and Shelton will host a showcase and sale of inmate art called “Art From the Inside.”
The show, which runs Feb. 13-16 in the lobby of the Sloppy Floyd Building in downtown Atlanta, is both a way to honor Fugate’s late grandmother and extend to Georgia inmates the same opportunities Wiggins gave to Mississippi’s prison population.
“The art produced by inmates continually astounds me,” Shelton said. “This exhibit will give the public a chance to appreciate and even own inmate art, while giving inmates the joy of creating it.”
Both she and Fugate hope the show becomes an annual event.
Not only did Wiggins hold the Parchman show twice annually, she worked year-round to promote literacy at the prison.
And just as her grandmother had, Fugate’s show will also be a contest with first, second and third prizes for work in seven different categories that will include paintings, woodwork, mixed media and pencil drawings.
Winning entries will be given prize ribbons and a small monetary prize. The remaining proceeds will be donated to HeartBound Ministries’ Little Readers program.
In all the years she shared with her grandmother, who died in 1995, Fugate said she never talked about her work on behalf of Mississippi inmates.
“I’m learning more and more about how much they did when she was there,” she said. “It’s an unusual legacy to have but what a great legacy of someone who wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives.”
Art programs for prisoners are becoming more and more common and their benefits clearer. Studies, in fact, show such programs can help decrease violence, improve interracial tensions, and bolster self-esteem within prisons.
Add to that the chance to do good and all of us benefit.
EVENT PREVIEW
“Art From the Inside”
Feb. 13-16. Free. Sloppy Floyd Building, 2 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Atlanta.
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