Interview with Dennis Sobin, one of the organizers of a new art show in Maryland featuring a unique form of art developed in US prisons. Pano art is drawings made on pieces of cloth and handkerchiefs. The collection is on display in a show called "Pano in American Tradition".
Tiffany Chong, Stark Raven Media Collective
*This interview is self contained with intro and extro*
Dennis Sobin is one of the organizers of a free art show featuring "Pano" art created in prisons across America. This is a special show called "Pano in American Tradition" at Takoma Park Community Center (Gallery 3), 7500 Maple Ave, Takoma Park, Maryland from June 12 to July 25, 2009. The art is part of the collection of the Safe Streets Arts Foundation, which operates the Prison Art Gallery in Washington DC.
Paño art draws on the deepest emotions of prisoners whose artistic expression is limited only by the materials at hand. The word paño (Spanish for cloth or handkerchief) has come to mean the art form itself -- a ball point pen or colored pencil drawing on a handkerchief.
Scholars have yet to determine the origin of paño art but some believe that it emerged in the 1940s among Chicano prisoners in the Southwestern United States who drew on the handkerchiefs or torn bed sheets. They do this because finding materials for artistic expression is difficult.
For more info go to http://www.prisonsfoundation.org/
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