Frank Albert Jones
(1900–1969)
BornClarksville City, Texas, United States
ActiveHuntsville, Texas, United States
BiographyFrank Albert Jones created hundreds of drawings on white paper with colored pencils. In particular, he favored red and blue erasable accounting pencils. He approached each piece of paper consistently: he divided the page into networks of geometric shapes, often squares and rectangles, that appear stacked together. The shapes form structures of many compartments, like buildings viewed from above or presented in cross-section. Intricately patterned forms, often pointed horns or spikes, alternate around the borders of each space. Many of the partitions contain detailed objects; some appear to be creatures with smiling faces. In almost half of Jones’s drawings, clocks loom, embedded in the structures.Jones made his known work during the last five years of his life, while he was incarcerated at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. He sourced his paper and colored pencils from prison office supplies and signed each drawing with his prison number, 114591 and, later, his name. In July 1964 the Texas Department of Corrections held its first annual inmate art exhibition, and Jones’s work was included. A representative from a Dallas art gallery visited the show, which led to Jones’s first solo exhibition later that year. A portion of the proceeds from artwork sales were deposited into his commissary account.
Jones’s notoriety outside of the penitentiary led to interviews in which he is quoted referring to the structures in his drawings as “devil houses.” He spoke of beginning to draw at age nine, around the same time as he began being able to see spirits. These “haints,” or “devils,” appear in his drawings, dwelling inside the architecture or perching at the perimeters. Jones died in the prison hospital after his parole was repeatedly denied. His time at Huntsville was his third period of incarceration: all three convictions were marked by conflicting testimony, and Jones maintained his innocence until his death.
Brooke Wyatt, 2024
Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).