“I might not have survived prison without these programs,” Daniel Killion—the Troy, NY artist, activist, furniture-maker, entrepreneur, and former bank robber—told an intimate audience at Adirondack Center for Writing on a Wednesday night this past July. In his characteristically blunt and radically honest way, Killion was answering an attendee’s question about the art classes he took during his twelve year prison sentence, provided by Community Partners in Action (Hartford, CT) and the instructor, now Killion’s mentor and friend, Jeffrey Greene. “Without [these programs] I likely would have died in there, one way or another,” Killion said.
Given ACW’s 20+ year commitment to serving incarcerated people in North Country prisons with creative writing and art opportunities, we were inspired to learn of Killion’s story and determined to bring him here to speak.
“Jeff just blew me away,” Killion told the Saranac Lake audience. “Everything in the prison system sucks. Everything. So, this man was an anchor to me, like a life-line. And I just poured myself into trying to be creative. But I didn’t want to just draw bars and chains, so I started finding all of these odd materials and making these weird sculptures, and he would just shoot it down. He’d say, ‘What are you doing, Danny? This is nonsense.’ So, I literally made a piece of art that said, ‘F*** What Jeff Thinks’ and I brought it to Art class to show him [laughs]. But, I was just so drawn in by it, because it gave me a purpose.”
In Portrait of a Bank Robber, written in collaboration with the Albany poet Matthew Klane, Killion says of his art teacher, “[Jeff Greene] is an incredible human being. And a huge influence in my life. I was immediately impressed by how he talked about art. About life. About society. And he gave us colored pencils, pens, and paper. At first, I did a lot of pretty bad drawings like these horned creatures. With chains on their legs and arms. They were like demons, mad that they were being demonized, just for being exactly who god created them to be.”
After Klane read a few key passages from early in the book covering Killion’s orphan upbringing and the abuse he suffered from his fundamentalist Christian foster parents, he explained to the audience how these factors made him feel set-up to fail. He rebelled in school, got hooked on drinking and drugs, and found the grueling work in kitchens and construction sites to be soul-sucking. These factors contributed to his decision to undertake a six-month bank robbing spree in the 90s.
Though his crimes were “victimless” (banks are of course, Danny reminded us, federally insured), Killion recalls in the book the impression left on him by hearing a bank clerk testify about her terror the day Killion entered her branch with a fake bomb, her inability to sleep in the months afterward. Though Killion evades making his memoir a contrite story of redemption or a perfunctory “righting of wrongs”, he often exhibits a self-awareness, vulnerability, and human honesty that anyone in attendance at our event experienced first-hand. His fresh, bracing voice is authentically presented by Matthew Klane who interviewed Danny various times during the pandemic and transcribed his responses to craft this book, which Klane calls a “voice portrait.”
Later in Portrait of a Bank Robber—when Danny is out of prison and running his reclaimed-wood furniture and art business, Weathered Wood—his old art teacher Jeff Greene stops by his store and their re-connection leads to Danny exhibiting work in Hartford and speaking at a number of events about the power of the prison arts program that so motivated him. “Most facets of the prison system are just designed to keep you caged and docile,” Danny says in the book. “So, especially when you’re locked up for a long time, it’s very easy to fall into the negative perspective. The prison art program, though, had such a profound effect on my life. This is what I said to those audiences: the program saved me. Helped me keep connected to who I was. Helped me look forward. And now I’m an artist. Who supports other artists. Who is part of a community. Who has his own small business.”
Killion also discusses other prison programs that equipped him with skills and gave him hope. From a correspondence-based Siddha yoga class that taught him mindfulness (“At times, meditating in a maximum security prison cell, I was the happiest that I’d ever been in my entire life.”) to the Native American-led smudging sessions and monthly sweat lodge that introduced him to an ancestral knowledge and new community, Killion relished opportunities to grow as a person behind bars.
At ACW in July, Killion expanded on his thoughts about all that prison programs offer not just to prisoners but also to the society they re-enter at the end of their sentences: “The truth is you have to think about the nearly two million people locked up in this country. Whether you like it or not, 90% of them are going to get out one day. Don’t you want those thousands who come out of prison to be better people than they were the day they went in?”
ACW certainly does. After a long-running program at FCI Ray Brook stalled during the pandemic, we’ve since led three separate months-long workshops at Adirondack Correctional Facility with the support and guidance of Lifetime Arts Inc, NYSCA, and ADK CF librarian, Suzanne Orlando. Our 2024 “Legacy Writing” workshop at Adirondack Correctional will culminate this winter with the production of a new anthology where prisoners’ writings will appear beside the writings of local older adults taking the same Creative Aging workshop at Heaven Hill in Lake Placid. “[People in prison] they need opportunities to grow, to feel like humans, to have a reason to live,” Killion told the ACW audience, “and that’s what these programs did for me.”
-Tyler
I am so glad to see that Danny is doing so well. We grew up together and went to school together for a bit. My name is Terri. Please let him know I am doing well.