Prisoners’ Inventions

By Angelo in collaboration with Temporary Services In 2001, the group Temporary Services invited their friend Angelo, a prisoner in California, to write about and draw the different things he had seen other prisoners invent. Angelo illustrated everything from immersion heaters with electrical plugs made from razor blades, paper clips, and popsicle sticks, to cooking methods for bologna jerky on built-in cell light fixtures. These drawings and writings became the book and widely exhibited project Prisoners’ Inventions , first published in 2003. This expanded second edition of Prisoners' Inventions supplements the original edition with over 80 pages of materials, including additional drawings and writings about prisoners' inventions that Angelo created and wrote about after the 2005 edition; new writing from Temporary Services that detail the origins and life of the project; blueprint drawings by Angelo of his prison cell; and photo documentation of the cell's recreation for various exhibition sites. Prisoners’ Inventions reveals an often-neglected side of prison existence: the need to create those objects and experiences that allow the most basic human desires to be satisfied. Published by Half Letter Press, 2020 Softcover, 200 pages, 1-color digital, 5.5 x 8.5 inches ISBN: 978-1-73-205142-3