Visual Art: Smuggling what's needed to survive

Apokaluptein:16389067 is vast, both in physical scope and in the narrative behind it. The artwork, roughly the size of a bus, is displayed on bedsheets that were purchased from a federal prison when the artist was serving a 70-month sentence for distribution of a controlled substance. 

Artist Jesse Krimes gathered the images on the piece from the New York Times, and painstakingly transferred them to the sheets with hair gel ($3.85 from the prison commissary) and a plastic spoon, at the rate of 30 minutes per image. 

The mural is divided into three sections — one, a cloudy blue sky with floating nudes, one with giant magazine models gliding over images of news events and one of advertisements for luxury items. The pastel palette and beautiful apathy of the female figures are calming, but there is also violence in the imagery. There is certainly something theological at play — one is reminded of The Garden of Earthly Delights. 

Federal agents raided Krimes’ house in 2009, and he was charged with possession of 15 to 50 kilos of cocaine, a weight that brings with it the possibility of life in prison. Krimes was locked up for a year awaiting sentencing at Dauphin County Prison in Harrisburg. At Dauphin, he was locked down 21 hours a day with no access to outside recreation. 

“The windows were so dirty no light could come through or they were broken out, allowing the birds to come in and fly over and defecate on our open trays of food,” Krimes said. “Everything from serial killers [to] … low-level, first-time, non-violent offenders to opposing gang members [were] being forced to live together.” 

The sentencing judge’s recommendation that Krimes be sent to a prison like FCI Fort Dix or Schuylkill (to be close to his newborn son) was ignored and Krimes was sent to North Carolina’s FCI Butner II. 

Krimes was a trained artist before prison, but it was at Butner II, in the midst of racial and gang-associated segregation, that Krimes discovered art as an instrument for breaking down barriers between people. Labeled as an “independent” by his incarcerated fellows, Krimes began to teach art to a racially diverse classroom.

Apokaluptein:16389067 would have been viewed as contraband by prison authorities, and so had to be smuggled out by mail piece-by-piece to Krimes’ girlfriend, Deborah Barkun. She views the packages as one of the only non-monitored conversations she was able to have with Krimes during his imprisonment. 

“In some ways, the whole process felt like a refuge and an assurance to me that the person I knew was not being consumed by the system,” Barkun said.

 Apokaluptein:16389067 is not complete. Krimes does not consider it a mural, and the piece will be displayed some other way in the future. Krimes is currently on home confinement and applying to graduate schools. He said he has been driven by his experience to help people who find themselves in positions like his.

“Art was not a choice for me. It was a means of survival, and I want to provide that opportunity to others who have had similar experiences,” Krimes said. 

Apokaluptein:16389067 is on view at Olivet Church Artists’ Studios, 608 N. 22nd St., through Feb. 28, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Ring the bell next to the parking lot door.