Ray Materson

Raymond Materson was born in Milford, Connecticut and lived in Michigan for many years. In 1988, at the age of 34, he began serving a fifteen-year sentence at the Connecticut Correctional Institute in Somers for crimes stemming from his addictions to alcohol and cocaine. Materson’s miniature tapestries, crafted from sock threads, shoelaces, and men’s clothing, were typical of prison art forms in their inventive use of recycled materials, strongly native dimensions, and linking of “outside” and “inside” worlds. His works exhibit exceptional design, detail, execution, and subject range.

Excerpts from 1992 interviews conducted by CCHAP Director Rebecca Joseph in preparation for curating an exhibit of Materson’s work, shed light on his understanding of his work and its significance:

“I remember watching my grandmother Patty as she would sit in her rocker and do this for hours at a time. It was while I was sitting in my bunk one afternoon, just around December ’88 I guess. I looked down and saw this lid on top of a plastic container and it just reminded me. Suddenly I just flashed on Grandmother’s sewing hoop and I thought ‘Gee, that looks just like it.’ I said ‘Well, I have a hoop. All I gotta do is cloth and that’s easy enough to come by’…I saw the colored socks hanging on the bars and I thought’ I wonder if I could take those apart…’ ”

“It’s been a means for me to relate to people. I’m not a real physical person. I’m not much into the macho scene which is real prevalent, of course, in here…Everybody likes the work. I’ve done dozens and dozens of pieces for people in here ranging from simple emblems to names, Puerto Rican flags…People have either kept them for themselves or sent them out. So it’s been my way of contributing and also of sharing and surviving.”