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Jason Treas, “Tierra y Libertad,” ballpoint
pen and pencil
Project Title: Mural Series
Recipient Organization: Pacific News Service
Lead Artist: Jason
Tréas
Genre and Date Awarded: Traditional Arts, June 2003
To Be Completed: September
2004
Visual artist Jason Tréas is collaborating with
The Beat Within, a project of Pacific News Service (PNS), and with
at-risk
youth
to create a series of
three murals, one at each of the Boys and Girls Club units in the greater
Mission District. A former prisoner, Tréas will design the
murals with input from youth
from the Mission. Their work together will depict challenges faced
by teenagers living with poverty and violence, and incorporate themes
of personal transformation
from the lead artist’s life.
The Beat Within offers weekly writing
workshops in juvenile halls and publishes works by incarcerated youth.
Over six years, Jason Tréas, then
an inmate
at Pelican Bay State Prison, became one of The Beat Within’s most
prolific and thoughtful contributors. He first discovered art while
locked up in San
Francisco Juvenile Hall, and was inspired to take his art seriously
when he saw one of his pieces published in The Beat Within.
His art continued to grow as he was transferred to San Quentin State
Prison,
New Folsom State
Prison, and finally to the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State
Prison. It was there that Tréas began to incorporate his political
and cultural ideas
into his art, combating 23.5 hours a day in isolation by emulating
the examples of Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros, creating art which
reflects
his heritage,
social perspective, and aspirations.
Tréas’ style blends urban
graffiti, prison, and more traditional Latino/Chicano influences;
and his pieces frequently incorporate quotations
from historical
figures or lines of poetry. His work, often published on front covers
of The
Beat Within, and picked up by other publications and exhibitions,
also adorns the cell walls of hundreds of incarcerated youth in the
Bay Area and
adults in the California Department of Corrections.
Now released
from prison, Tréas will translate his distinctive graphic style
to the scale and context of the Latino/Chicano mural movement,
addressing what he refers to as “creation through self-examination.” He
writes, “I
realize just how desperately—by my own painful experiences
and that of a thousand other men I’ve encountered—we
have an obligation to prevent others from traveling the same road….”
Tréas
will be assisted by Christine Wong, artistic director of YO!
Youth Outlook magazine; and Josu_ Rojas, staff artist for YO!. .
Wong worked for four years with internationally renowned painter
Juana Alicia,
participating in more than a dozen large murals; and she has taught
mural painting for several
organizations. Rojas was raised in the Mission District, trained
by the Precita Eyes Mural Art Center, and worked on some of the
neighborhood’s
most prominent murals. In recruiting youth for their collaboration,
The Beat Within
and Pacific
News Service will work with the Boys and Girls Clubs, Bernal Heights
Community Center, the Mission Consortium, and Precita Eyes Mural
Arts Center.
The Beat Within writing and conversation program,
a project of Pacific News Service, was founded in 1996, when discussions
of
Tupac Shakur’s
death revealed how deeply his loss impacted the lives of incarcerated
youth. Out
of this experience, The Beat Within became a weekly publication
of writing and art from juvenile hall and beyond. Today, The Beat
Within conducts
50 writing
and conversation workshops per week in seven juvenile hall facilities
in the San Francisco Bay Area—San Francisco, Alameda, San
Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Marin and Napa counties—as
well as satellite programs in San Luis Obispo County and Natural
Bridge Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia.
The submissions are compiled into two weekly publications ranging
from 40 to 100 pages and one monthly twelve-page publication, as
well as being posted
to The Beat’s website (thebeatwithin.org). In addition, the
back pages of The Beat Within contains a section called “The
Beat Without” — contributions
from past workshop participants, as well as numerous youth and
adult detainees and ex-detainees from across California and the
US. It is in the pages of “The
Beat Without” that the relationship between Tréas and The
Beat was born.
Among the hundreds
of letters and drawings from young people touched by The Beat
Within’s
programs, each week the organization receives mail from ex-offenders
and incarcerated adults
writing from jails and maximum-security prisons around the country.
Many of these adults become contributors to a special section of The
Beat Within, entitled “The Beat Without.” Over six
years Jason Tréas contributed an immense body of writing and art
to this section, becoming one of the magazine’s most prolific
and thoughtful contributors. His pencil and ink renditions of urban
life reflect themes of cultural identity, self-awareness and liberation.
Many depict images and characters from Mexico and Latin America.
The drawings combine a fine attention to detail with a fluid, dynamic
quality.
In additional to his popular following among incarcerated
youth, his pieces have been published in California Prison Focus,
Voz Fronteriza, Crossroad, Revolutionary Worker, and other
publications. Some were showcased
at California and Texas low-rider shows, where they were silk-screened onto
T-shirts whose profits bought books for prisoners. A selection of his work
was part of “View from SHU: Human Face of Those Labeled the Worst of the
Worst,” an exhibition of prison art that traveled throughout California in
1999 and 2000.
- Low Rider Car Shows, California and Texas, 2001-03
- “View from the SHU: The Human Face of Those Labeled the Worst of the Worst,” touring
exhibition, organized by Bar None, sponsored by California Prison Focus
and Barrios Unidos (San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Fresno, and Oakland),
1999-2000
- “Imagine: The Future is Yours!” Horizons
Unlimited, 2003
- The Beat Within, Pacific News Service
- Crossroad, a Spear and Shield quarterly
- Voz Fronteriza, Spanish/English student-run
quarterly, University of California, San Diego
- Las Calles y La Torcida, quarterly publication
of the Chicano/Mexican Prison Project
- Low Rider Magazine
- Low Rider Arte
- Revolutionary Worker
- Shades of Power, quarterly
publication of The Multi-Racial Institute for Justice
- YO!, Youth Outlook, Pacific News Service
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