Vintage Folk Art Sculpture Billy Burke's 150,000 Toothpick Amusement Park from Folsom Prison

Billy Burke made three toothpick amusement parks while being held in Folsom Prison, this likely being the largest.  He once made a roller coaster out of shotgun shells.  Various wardens over the years would bring in visitors to see the construction.  In 1994, the Sacramento Bee told his story which you can read HERE.

Toothpick Circus by Billy Burke Real Photo Postcard circa 1950  Collection Jim Linderman 

Balsa Bighouse ! Cardboard Clink! Handmade Prison Model Folk Art Greybar Hotel

Handmade Folk Art Prison Model.  A patient and talented prisoner who lives up the river likely made this model of his home, but I have always had a problem with "prison art" when it involves a knife.  Isn't that the first thing they TAKE from prisoners?  Still, prison art is a legitimate collecting category, and I don't mean those ghouls who like to collect horrible clown paintings from Gacy or the handmade spiders Charlie Manson has been selling of late.  Plenty of confined artists do good work...even if only marking the wall daily.

Big House Folk Art Prison Model no date Collection Jim Linderman  

Serving Time with Father Time Prison Art and Clock Hands which Don't Move

Plenty of nothing, but plenty of time.  Paraphrase of the Porgy and Bess song.  If anyone had plenty of nothing and plenty of time, it would be someone serving it.  Hence Prison Art.  Akin to the branch of institutionalized outsider art  (oxymoron) which existed before psychoactive drugs sapped some of the fevered creativity.  Folks in small living quarters with nothing on their hands BUT time…and sometimes an object of art results.

I don't know if this giant fake grandfather clock (Father Time) constructed of hundreds of wooden matchsticks was made by a prisoner, but it does have a time motif.  It even has a fake pendulum and weights which move, but the the hands do not.  He's stuck.  Time keeps dragging on.  A lifer.

One way to tell if your wooden object is tramp art versus prison art?  Did it require a KNIFE?  Most hoosegows frown, as general policy, of giving the inmates knives.

Tramp Art or Prison Art Grandfather Clock of Matchsticks.  No Date.  Collection Jim Linderman

Books and Ebooks by Jim Linderman are available HERE