‘The Escape Artist’ Solo Exhibit’ Shadowed Views From the Private World of William Noguera

Opening night reception with delectable black & white hors d'oeuvres compliments of Chef Armando Litatco. In tribute to Mr. Noguera's art, black & white attire is encouraged. The Institute For Unpopular Culture is proud to present a retrospective of the works San Quentin’s self-taught artistic visionary William Noguera, in conjunction with a short documentary about him, ‘The Ghost in the Material’, by Stanford MFA Film candidate Kelcey Edwards. Film Arts Foundation presents ‘Bad Boys of Summer’, directed by Tiller Russell & Loren Mendell: startling new look at our national pastime, baseball, as played by the San Quentin Giants. William Noguera is an artist unparalleled in artistic vision and creative tenacity. From the confines of his 4x10 foot cell on Death Row at the notorious San Quentin State Prison, down on his knees, hunched over a makeshift easel erected from his steel mattress frame, he crafts painstaking canvases of chilling beauty and great emotional depth. A personal tragedy when he was eighteen led him to be convicted and sentenced to death in what Robert Bryan, Mr. Noguera's defense attorney, calls “a travesty of justice”. Mr. Bryan is available for interviews concerning William’s case. Even though William was fated to live on Death Row, it is the story of transcendence and rehabilitation through art that is at the inspirational heart of the matter. Mr. Noguera is a completely self-taught artist; he has been imprisoned since 1983. During an enforced 27 day stay in solitary confinement, William began to draw on the walls of his cell, and has focused on this means of expression ever since to escape the confines of his difficult circumstances. He describes his artistic style as ‘hyper-realistic, neo-cubism in ink stippling’. Through the careful placement of thousands of individual black dots, dramatic images rise to life, each piece requires hundreds of hours for completion.