Incarcerated artists in Bonne Terre hone their skills with a St. Louis exhibit and art class 8%
By Chad Davis0%
4/6/2026, 10:00:00 AM
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Rey Hernandez shares three drawings and paintings he’s been working on recently.
There’s a commissioned piece of a fellow incarcerated man and his fiancée.
One other is of a woman with a wolf’s pelt on her head with mountains, waterfalls and another wolf in the background.
Like for every artist, sometimes the ideas come to Hernandez; other times, he looks for inspiration.
“Sometimes when it just gets monotonous, I have to do something creative,” Hernandez said.
“So if you just throw me your favorite color, favorite animal, then I got to figure out a way to get creative and just get outside my box.”
His last piece is of the number “224,” which means today, tomorrow and forever.
A variation of that artwork hangs among 12 other illustrations and paintings on the walls at the St.
Louis University Museum of Art.
Hernandez has even created a pen name, “Second Life.”
“I like to think of this as like my resurrection, so to speak,” he said.
Hernandez and others have spent the past year honing their craft as part of SLU’s Prison Arts and Education Program while detained at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.
The initiative is part of the university’s prison education program in which inmates can earn a degree or take classes.
A group of prison artists has been learning how to draw, paint and use mixed media for a gallery exhibition and murals.
About 130 pieces are on display as part of "Expressions from Within: Art from SLU's Prison Education Program."
The exhibit includes a wide array of work from incarcerated artists who can live outside the prison walls.
It runs through April 12.
For 16 years, SLU staff and hired artists have held artist talks and taught classes at the maximum security prison.
Last year, the university altered the program when it launched an artist residency led by Stan Chisholm, a St.
Louis-based visual artist and musician who performs as 18andCounting.
Chisholm travels to the prison twice a week, where he started the program’s open studio.
Artists can ask him questions, work on techniques and just be themselves.
“What if we just have supplies for people to do what they want?”
Chisholm said.
“What if there's not deadlines and grades and lessons?”
Chisholm said the open studios idea came out of a quiet art session he held when visiting the prison for a talk a few years back.
He said once artists started working on their projects, there was stillness.
“The room was just quiet, there was nothing going on and one of the guys goes, 'It's usually this quiet when there's like good food or something,'” Chisholm said.
“It was just like this bliss.”
Program coordinator Devin Johnston said the program chose Chisholm for his teaching experience at Artscope and Kairos Academies Middle School.
Artists at the prison have different levels of experience.
Many said Chisholm’s teaching style is what kept them engaged in the courses.
“I've been calling him professor for five months,” James Merritt, one of the incarcerated artists, said.
“I've been to every SLU Speaker Series he's been in, and I adore the man.”
Merritt has learned how to use watercolors and has about 10 pieces on display.
But if someone wants a painting from him, there are a few ground rules.
“I will do something that's uplifting from depression, but I won't do anything that's depressing,” Merritt said.
“I think a word I heard today was cringe.
I don't do anything cringe.”
Other artists like Rondell Cornelius have also learned how to use watercolors to paint landscapes, like pictures of the night skyline from images in encyclopedias.
“I just like people's reactions for real,” Cornelius said.
“I like to put a smile on people's faces.”
For artists like Floyd Sampa, the open classes reignited an interest in drawing cartoon characters like Voltron, which he'd draw for his grandmother as a kid.
“She said I could do better than that, so I started drawing kind of abstract stuff at an early age because I still love to draw,” Sampa said.
Other artists like the ability to collaborate.
“You have [Chisholm], and then you have other artists in there, and everybody just helps each other,” artist Rontese Miller said.
“That's what we do.”
Artists are also collaborating on a mural project on walls throughout the prison.
One includes paintings of the spines of their favorite books.
The other side of the wall includes paintings of the Pietà and the patron saints of education.
Those images are by Kenneth Bell and are an ode to the SLU program where he got his degree this spring.
He also hopes it inspires others.
“It’s also something that I wanted to do so that the guys here could see somebody doing something different,” Bell said.
“I mean you can imagine the things that go on in prison.”
Outside of the mural project, Bell’s gallery submissions include portraits of civil rights and humanitarian activists like the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John Brown and Mother Teresa.
The program will send those portraits to his family.
Program organizers wanted to make sure artists got to decide what happens to their pieces after the exhibit ends.
“If they donate the art to the program, then they're giving it to SLU,” Operations Director Mary Reising said.
“If they choose to loan it, then they still have full ownership of the art, and we then will ship it off to a family member or a friend when we're done with it for safekeeping.”
Program organizers are looking toward the future.
Johnston said they rely on grants and donations.
He said Chisholm’s presence has brought a consistency to the program.
Johnston would also like to start a music program.
“We've experimented with it on a small scale,” Johnston said.
“I think [it’s] sort of an untapped resource and form of expression that we could really build on.”
As for Chisholm, he said one of the most fulfilling aspects of the project is seeing how each artist recognizes their talent.
“There's so much energy being put into making sure they know that we're good folks,” Chisholm said.
“Make sure they know that we're humans, make sure they see that we're talented, make sure that they see that we're thinking the same as them.
And that's what art is about, it’s just magical.”
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