Art is another way to connect and to communicate with nature, the world, and one’s higher self.
“The rumor is that I was painting with my fingers even before I could talk,” said Anand Jon Alexander. “My grandmother, yoga, and the temple walls of India, inspired my creative of expressions.”
According to the artist, art is a powerful tool for rehabilitation, as artists peacefully promote messages of positive change. In a world subjected to dehumanization, genocide, and racial conflict, art can present a unifying force for coexistence.
This talented artist has been sketching, painting, and recreating paintings of famous artists like Gandhi and famous works like the Statue of Liberty.
According to Alexander, these characters represent the icon of truth, justice, and liberty. Gandhi’s motto “Even as a minority of one, the truth is still the truth,” is something that deeply motivated Alexander that he incorporates into his life-mission.
As an immigrant, he said he believed that the Statue of Liberty stood for equality and that anyone would have a chance to succeed in America.
Alexander has applied art as an “artivism” — artists using art as medium for activism — platform to raise awareness on the systemic racism against minorities and immigrants like him. He is the founder of the Racial Justice Activist Coalition at San Quentin.
As the California Model shift gears, this artist joined the Circle Back environmental project, which up-cycles wood from the demolished Building 38 to build an eco-pod for the incarcerated community.
Alexander was an award-wining designer at the Parsons School of Design, and even through incarceration, he continued to apply his skills to environmental sustainability projects. He is also currently in the first master’s degree program with Cal State University Dominguez Hills.
While continuing to explore his vocational training at CDCR, he expanded his creative tools to go beyond the traditional incarcerated artist by using Microsoft Word software to show the innovative application of technology when controlled by an artist, instead of the other way around.
This “Awakened” piece showed that one could expand one’s consciousness to perceive and experience in multiple dimensions the challenges of the laws of nature.
