Small space, big design
October 31st, 2006 Category FurniturePHILADELPHIA - The goal had apocalyptic overtones: to design furniture for survivors confined to tight, temporary shelters after a natural disaster.
To carry it out, social activist and conceptual artist Peggy Diggs turned to a population that is expert at compact living.
Prison inmates.
For more than 18 months, the 60-year-old instructor from Williams College in Massachusetts commuted to Montgomery County, Pa., and brainstormed with 15 residents, most of them lifers, at maximum-security Graterford Prison in Skippack Township.
WorkOut, an exhibit that ran through Oct. 25 in the appropriately cramped foyer of the Broad Street Ministry in Center City Philadelphia, reveals the fruits of their collaboration: five graphically vivid, expandable desk/storage containers.
Each unit is made of thick cardboard — a familiar material to those acquainted with the “deprivation of incarceration,†Diggs says — done up in bold colors and intricate patterns designed and painted by the prisoners.
Over the project’s long and bumpy haul, the inmates refined their concepts and revealed a humanity the artist hadn’t expected.
“I had the picture of foaming-at-the-mouth people who would hurt me the minute I came in,†Diggs said. Instead, the prisoners were eager to use their talent and insights to benefit a world few will see again.
“They did all these fancy handshakes with me, so I gathered that was a good sign,†Diggs said of an early encounter.
Eddie Ramirez, 29 and already 10 years into a life sentence for robbery-homicide, was intrigued by the chance to make something useful.
“I was a destroyer of things,†the former graffiti artist said in a collect call from Graterford. “Now I’m a builder of things.â€
Ramirez conceived the concept for the desks, which expand from 3 to 6 feet and contain shelf space.
About 40 pieces were constructed by Diggs and a helper, then donated to the Riverview Home for the Aged, a city-run personal-care facility in northeast Philadelphia.
Diggs has not tallied the costs involved but expects grants to cover the expense.
The inmates can’t see the exhibit. But they applied their graphic designs to the cardboard pieces, and they “looked beautiful,†said Ramirez, who created a locking-S pattern inspired by wrought iron.
“I got to do something for people in that shelter,†he said proudly. “I got to use my brain.â€
Practical projects such as these connect prisoners to society, says Jane Golden, director of the city’s Mural Arts Program. “This process, thinking about furniture, how it would benefit others’ lives, was really a wonderful exercise in empathy … in reconciliation.â€
The inspiration for WorkOut came to Diggs in a 2004 article in a London publication. The story was about a “secret report†predicting the effect a drastic climate might have on Europe. Sea levels could swamp major cities, the report warned, causing famine, riots and widespread population dislocation.
The dire scenario gave Diggs her seed. With an initial grant of $10,000 from New York’s Creative Capital Foundation, she contacted Golden, who introduced Diggs to some of the Graterford inmates who had worked on city murals.
“Everybody is expert at something,†Diggs said. “I like to seek out populations we normally consider unworthy of attention.â€
The artist’s previous projects have tackled intentional poverty among those who opt for a simpler life — Quakers, for example — and what preparing for a terrorist attack entails for the modern consumer.
For WorkOut, “my goal had been to have several fabulous, far-ranging objects that I could get patents on, and that I could get into production so that these guys wouldn’t feel like toss-offs,†she said.