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If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider supporting us as a member. Join Us LOS ANGELES — As I walked through No Prior Art: Illustrations of Invention at the Los Angeles Public Library’s downtown Central Library, a small installation stopped me dead in my tracks. Through an open door was a jail cell, sparkling in its brand new stainless steel.
Squeezed into the narrow room, about the size of my walk-in closet, was a bunk bed, desk, shelving, and toilet mounted mere centimeters away from the bottom bunk. “Prisoners’ Invention” (2001–14) recreates the room in which an incarcerated inventor, simply known as Angelo, lived for more than a decade. An artist collective on the outside, Temporary Services, built prototypes of the items Angelo saw MacGyvered in the prison system, like salt and pepper shakers made from empty Bic lighters, a pop-up Christmas tre.