From courant

From courant.com

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Creating Art, Trying To Forgive Himself

Susan Campbell

May 16, 2007

The only color in the eerie white street scene is a tiny red-lit cigarette of a woman waiting for a bus. There's a streetlight overhead that lights up, a full shopping cart and a guy rooting through the trash, for cans, maybe.

The medium looks like marble, but it's soap, coated with floor wax.

In prison, you use what you've got.

The work is detailed - the tired face of the man on the park bench, the stooped shoulders of the man reading the newspaper.

Sarah Harrower-Wierzbicki is bent to get a picture. This is the work of her son, Joseph Cusano IV (Jay to his family), now serving 10 years in jail - suspended after seven - for the death of his friend, Robert Patrick Boxwell (Robb or Robbie to his family). Boxwell, 22, the oldest of three sons and the father of a toddler daughter, died in a car driven by a drunken Cusano in May 2002 in Orange.

Cusano, who discovered his artistic bent after he donned the jumpsuit of an inmate, is part of the 29th annual Community Partners in Action prison art show through Saturday at City Lights Gallery in Bridgeport. The works of the more than 100 artists are colorful, stark, defiant, quiet. Cusano's is awash in sadness. The figures are downcast.

"Last Kiss" shows two kneeling figures embracing. "Loss of a Friend" has two figures kneeling at a gravestone. "Fragility of Life" has one figure cradling another.

To pass time on the cellblock, Cusano, the father of two young daughters, started drawing the women of Maxim magazine. He progressed to portraits of fellow inmates and then on to soap carvings. He perfected his art using the tools at hand: a pen cartridge and a paper clip. The soap came from other inmates, the prison store, the correctional officers.

He says he's carved maybe 50 pieces, and the pieces kept getting larger until the administration stepped in, said Jeffrey Greene, arts program manager.

"These artists are not able to interact in the community, and the art ends up doing a lot of their living," said Greene. "You have all of these people making art because they can't help but make it. That to me is what it is to be an artist."

A permanent collection of prison art travels extensively around New England, Greene said. Later in June, Cusano's work will move to the Chester Gallery with other artists.

Recently, the artist has turned to pastels. He keeps a journal. He's writing poetry - all activities he began in jail.

"I needed a way to express my past," Cusano said. "Most of my feelings were about my friend. If this hadn't happened, I wouldn't know I had any talents, but the conflict is that I took a life to get here. Something really bad happened for this. Every time I do art, a little bit more of it goes away."

He describes himself at the time of Boxwell's death as "21 and bullet-proof." "I didn't care about anything," Cusano said. "That's being honest. That's what I found through coming here. I found a sense of independence, if you can believe it."

Greene says prison is set up to allow for much contemplative time. That goes for the families, too.

"One year when Jay was little, they made these little pillows," Harrower-Wierzbicki said. "They were for Mother's Day, and all the others had flowers and `I love you, Mommy' on them. Jay brought home one that was black and brown. He always saw things differently.

"I told Jay when he went to Enfield that he could feel sorry for himself, or he could take steps to change and become someone Robbie would be proud of. I think he's doing that, becoming someone his friend can be proud of."

Susan Campbell is at scampbell@ courant.com or 860-241-6454.