Desks designed by inmates put on display

PHILADELPHIA -- While dorm rooms keep students cramped close to their books, and studio apartments don't offer much room between the stove and the bed, it's rare to find living quarters smaller than those in prisons.\nSo when conceptual artist Peggy Diggs wanted help designing furniture that fits in tight spaces, she turned to a group of 15 inmates at the maximum security State Correctional Institution at Graterford.\n"WorkOut ," a series of brightly colored, collapsible desks representing more than a year of the inmates' brainstorming, designing and decorating, will be on display through Oct. 25 at the Broad Street Ministry in Philadelphia.\n"It's a goofy combination of industrial design and folk art," Diggs said, standing between two versions of the desk. \nOne was covered in stylized black and gray human faces, while the other was bright green and adorned with bold-colored, overlapping blocks.\nOccupying the foyer of the ministry's church downtown, the exhibit is a big concept held in a diminutive showroom.\nThe idea for making pieces that fit in confined quarters came to Diggs after reading an article about how the potential fallout from global warming could force people to adopt small, temporary shelters.\nThe Graterford inmates, Diggs said, are "experts in tight living who could take their experience in the cells to design for others forced to live in tight circumstances, either through catastrophes like (Hurricane) Katrina or because they don't have a lot of money and have to make do with little space."\nIn June 2005, Diggs started meeting with the prisoners twice a week.\nFor the first two months, she led them through design workshops, teaching them the basics of creating three-dimensional objects. With the fundamentals in place, she opened the floor to their ideas for furnishings that might make their compact chambers more hospitable.\nThe inmates came up with ideas such as a fold-up bed containing seats and a table, a storage cube that hooked on to bunk beds and a briefcase that doubled as a desk. The design on which they settled was for a combination desk and storage space. Its two wings, with four drawers each, fold in to make the unit more compact, while still allowing access to the drawers' contents.\nPerhaps the most striking aspects of the desks are their intricate, hand-painted decorations, inspired by tattoos, Japanese animation and other interests in the inmates' everyday lives.\nThe desks the inmates worked with were miniature cardboard models. The full-size, fully operational desks in the exhibit -- displayed in various states of unfolding -- are still crafted from the original cardboard.\nDiggs constructed the full-scale desks with the help of a cardboard company, working off the inmates' model.\n"We wanted to stick with cardboard all the way through to keep it at the same level of deprivation as in the cells," Diggs said. "Cardboard was what we could get into the prison, so that's what we worked with."\nThe project was helped by a grant from the New York-based Creative Capital Foundation and by Jane Golden, director of Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program, who has previously worked with inmates and put Diggs in touch with them.\nArt can be a "form of visual restitution" for the prisoners, Golden said.\nLike painting murals, designing furniture helps them to see that everybody can be productive, she said.\nInmates who called in by teleconference to the exhibit said that the furniture project helped them to stay connected with the outside world and give something back to the community.\nAt the suggestion of one inmate, Diggs will donate 30 of the inmate-designed desks to the Riverview Home for the Aged in the city's Holmesburg neighborhood. The home is a personal care facility for elderly or disabled adults who are homeless or without income.\n"The furniture we have now is basically uniform," said Sally Fisher, the home's director. "What's exciting about this is they'll have something that's functional, that's really going to brighten up their space."\nThe inmates haven't seen the full-sized versions of their desks, and Diggs said they are most excited to see pictures of them being delivered to Riverview.\n"They couldn't care less about some art opening," she said of the exhibit, "but they're really thrilled they can make something in prison, and immediately it's going to work in somebody else's life"