Friday, January 22, 2010

Still Life: Public Defenders


Years ago, a former client of our office took up Origami during his prolonged pre-trial detention awaiting his murder trial. He used his brown-paper lunch bags as the material for his art (until the jail guards stopped giving him lunch bags anymore, just to fuck with him. So then we sent him loads of yellow legal pads through legal mail. Ha!)

In this piece, the client-artist used a unique combination of toilet paper and M & Ms (for color) to create his work.




















I've seen PDs who blithely take on clients charged with rape, murder, molestation and mayhem refuse to represent a client accused of animal cruelty. We've got our standards! And we like dogs better than we like most people.

Sometimes our clients like us, too.


In this piece, the client-artist used unraveled jail socks to craft a macrame necklace. Practice tip: Watch out for the stretchy version of this art-form--it is probably made of unraveled jail underwear.
























Cup O Dragons: paper lunch bag and ice-cream cup.

The attorney-artist used vinyl and her Cricut Expressions machine to create this piece.

This scares me:


It scares the dragons, too. Back in the cup, everyone!

I won't say we wondered where Orgami Guy was, since we all knew where he'd be spending a very long time, but I did wonder if he still did Origami, or if he had moved on to other crafts.  Then, one day, the gal across the hall from me got a present that one of her clients had sent her from prison.



When she looked at the bottom of the piece, she saw that it was signed by, none other than, our own Orgami Guy!

Some days we need words of encouragement.



Keep calm? RUFK?

And just when you're about ready to jump out the courthouse window, you get a present from an alleged OK, convicted manslaughterer featuring you as an awesome superhero, and even though no one else sees you that way, and the client was probably just bored--the world is good, and you can fight for another day!

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