Learning Curve: An Introduction to (Death Row Inmate) Johnny D. Miles' Collage Art, Poetry, & Mind

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Twenty-seven years after the murder of Nancy Willem, the State of California has not put Johnny Miles to death. For the majority of the past twenty-seven years, Johnny Miles has lived in a one-person cell on San Quentin’s death row, among hundreds of others convicted of first-degree murder. Johnny Miles has had to find a measure of acceptance to continue living on death row. He has not chosen suicide or to use hard drugs. Neither has he been a victim of a fatal attack by other inmates. Johnny Miles has chosen to live while under the sentence of death.

Johnny Miles is the primary author of the book: THE JOHNNY D. MILES LEARNING CURVE: An Introduction to (Death Row Inmate) Johnny D. Miles’ Collage Art, Poetry & Mind.
The Learning Curve is fine art in that patient informed perception is required for a fuller imbuing of Johnny Mile’s artistic intent and subterranean self-expression. The Learning Curve is meant for the learned: a person that can separate flair from meaning; a person able to perceive thematic repetition and aberration; more or less an investigative and curious art enthusiast and/or enjoyer of abstract poetry.

Johnny Mile’s collaging and poetry exist within the solitary confinement of his own sense of rhyme and rhythm, concept, tone, and intrigue. His work is a soliloquy in the effort to find meaning and transmit meaning. All reading of his work should occur with the background knowledge of his minimal formal education for Johnny dropped out of school in the 10th grade.

The word psychopath denoted is clinical while in general parlance communicates pure evil. The word "psychopathy" connotes less negativity to the labeled while still bordering on insult. Basketball great Michael Jordan has been called psychopathic as has the sitting American President, Donald Trump. British psychologist Kevin Dutton in his so-called, “Great British Psychopath Survey” found many eminently valued professions, such as clergy, filled in great proportions by psychopaths. Due to my own lack of credentials and my genuine relationship with Johnny Miles I cannot label him. However, Johnny Mile’s art and poetic expressions are a step toward Johnny Miles exposing himself to the world as he is.

Johnny Mile’s collage art is the diamond produced through nearly twenty-seven years of impaction by a solitary cell on death row, his own thoughts, and perceptions of self, and his character and propensities. Death row shaped Johnny Miles into a collage artist. Inspiration struck his person in the form of an adolescent's after-school letter to a death row inmate; he tried collaging and it worked for him. Since that day in 2003, Johnny Miles has been dedicated to the art form.