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Outsider Art FROM THE COLLECTION OF JOHN MORGAN The felon who saved wooden matchsticks bartered from cellmates to craft this chapel worked slowly in sparse light with a locksmith’s fingers. What he used as glue is already a mystery, probably some gray paste whipped up in the kitchen from cornstarch and chicken grease. The church is a marvel— solid, polished, flush, and plumb, its symmetries and surprises, I imagine, sketched for practice on a steel wall. Touching it, I can’t help wonder how many smuggled coffin nails were lit to render the miniscule timber, pine sticks with the scorch-end snipped. What was he in for, anyway? I picture two hearts tattooed blue as a lucifer’s tip, a gray beard grizzled rough as emery, his fingers nimble enough to read Braille. The steeple is perfect, the portal cross, pitched roof, chancel windows backed with foil. By day did he scrub laundry or pound rocks? He knew what it meant to be confined by work and freed by form. He watched every inmate 29 1SMITH_pages.qxd 8/13/07 10:44 AM Page 29 lighting up, match tips flared by friction, the sulphur and phosphorous of brimstone, and yet he raised a holy house to convey his patience. Meticulous, he could not shake or waver, shaping what had been blown out to conjure visions of escaping smoke. House of sleeping fire tempting any spark, his unkindled pyre, it lit the prison dark. 30 1SMITH_pages.qxd 8/13/07 10:44 AM Page 30 ...

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