JAILHOUSE ARTIST MAKES MARK ON MURALS

Anthony Jones can make concrete walls vanish with a stroke of his hand,
turn blank closet doors into elegant marble hallways and transform drab
rooms into opulent mansions. But he cannot stop using cocaine.

At 45, Mr. Jones is a testament to the power of art and the power of
addiction. While most painters trace their development across gallery
walls, Mr. Jones traces his across the walls of four Rikers Island jails
and half a dozen upstate prisons.

"He's definitely a marketable commodity on the outside," said Sandra Lewis
Smith, a deputy commissioner of the city's Department of Correction, who
has watched Mr. Jones's artwork develop over the last decade. "The problem
is he just can't stay out of jail."

All the adjectives that fit an artist apply to Mr. Jones. He can be
inspiring, charming and inventive. All the adjectives that apply to a
drug-addicted thief also fit him. He can be impulsive, manipulative and
deceitful.

"One day maybe before God calls him home he can wake up and see the light,"
his mother said. "He's a hard worker, but I would have to say he is weak to
a degree."

Mr. Jones's mother said that after years of false promise, frustration and
stinging disappointment from her son she did not want to raise her hopes
again and did not want her family identified. "You have no idea what we've
been through," she said, "how many times we've tried."

Mr. Jones fell in love with drawing at 7 while growing up in a stable,
two-parent home in Brooklyn. He graduated from public high school, took art
classes at Bronx Community College and began planting the seeds of a
commercial sign and mural painting business. Then, at 28, he tried cocaine
with a friend. A few months later, another friend showed him how to
freebase, or smoke cocaine. "I tasted it and that's all she wrote," he said.

Mr. Jones has spent the last 13 years in and out of prison. He is currently
on Rikers Island, charged with attempted burglary. He knows his addiction
has squandered his talent and devastated his family. But, like many people
struggling with addiction, compulsive behavior or a simple bad habit, he is
at a loss to explain his inability to stop.

Some doctors say that chronic addicts like Mr. Jones are victims of
chemical imbalances in their brain. Others, like his mother, say he is
simply weak. He says he does not know. "Every day I lay down in the bed and
I pray and I ask God what is this?" he said. "Why did this happen? What am
I supposed to do to make it better?"

His lament is a familiar one in city jails, where 80 percent of arrested
men test positive for drug use. Mr. Jones began painting on Rikers Island
when he was first arrested for misdemeanor drug possession in 1988.

Prison officials noted his abilities and set him to work. Crude examples of
his strongest trait -- depicting vast stretches of open space -- line the
quarter-mile-long hallway where prisoners are led to cellblocks in the
James A. Thomas Center jail. Landscapes of lighthouses, churches nestled on
mountain ridges and lush gardens all convey a feeling of openness. "I don't
know why I like light so much," Mr. Jones said. "I guess it's the space.
The birds flying. Freedom."

After his first arrest, Mr. Jones continued using drugs and began stealing
to support his habit. In 1992, he was convicted of burglary and sentenced
to 5 to 10 years in prison.

While serving time upstate, he developed his hallmark -- painting
three-dimensional murals on cinder-block walls that give viewers the sense
that they are looking out a window, or through a doorway, or down a hallway
into a completely different world. Prison officials had him paint town
hall, library and local fair signs in upstate hamlets.

After a few years, he stopped signing his work in prison. "It's a bad
omen," he said. "They said if you sign your work, you'll come back."

He came back anyway. His most recent murals line the walls of the
Adolescent Reception and Detention Center on Rikers Island. It is some of
his best work.

One three-dimensional mural in the jail's visiting room places the viewer
at the top of a grand staircase descending toward a bubbling fountain and
manicured hedges and lawns. Green mountains and a pristine lake shimmer on
the horizon.

A mural on a closet door makes prisoners think they are looking down a
palace hallway. Another transports them to a snowy New England street with
storefronts, a trolley car and a carriage.

"What I'm trying to do is to make them relax during the visits," he said.
"To take them out of the jail mentally."

He glowed with pride as he described reactions to a mural portraying a
partly constructed hallway leading to a beach. "Some people look at it and
they think it's a gallows," he said. "Another person looks at it and they
see a church. It's like all abstract art. People come up with whatever they
want to see."

Much of his prison work is purely utilitarian -- signs denoting law
libraries, sports teams' logos on barbershop walls and drawings of food and
toiletries for sale in the commissary.

Even there, he sometimes shows flair. A three-dimensional image of an
inmate mailbox was so real that unwitting prisoners tried to open it,
according to corrections officers. Replicas of cartoon characters in the
visiting room are so exact that children tried to kiss them, Mr. Jones
said. The men who guard him rave about his work, which they often request
to feature their names or faces.

"It makes everybody relax," said Emmanuel H. Bailey, the superintendent of
the adolescent jail on Rikers Island. "I'd rather see him on the outside,
but when we get talent like this, we're going to utilize it."

George Johnson, a corrections officer who works in a command post repainted
by Mr. Jones, hailed his work. Mr. Jones painted red bricks on the post's
gray cinder-block walls, two fireplaces with crackling logs near the floor
and stars on the ceiling. "It takes the edge off of it being something dull
and dreary," Mr. Johnson said. "You feel a little more relaxed. Certain
colors do something to you."

Mr. Jones's mother said she was at a loss to explain her son's path. He was
born into a Brooklyn home that was anything but broken. His parents are
still married and have held steady jobs throughout their working lives.
When Anthony was a teenager, his family moved out of a public housing
project and bought a private home. None of his siblings has had trouble
with the law or with drugs.

Before he began using, Mr. Jones was working as a clerk in the pediatrics
department of Kings County Hospital Center and training to be a
professional boxer. He had an apartment, a steady girlfriend and his first
jobs silk-screening shirts and painting signs. His girlfriend gave birth to
a boy and then a girl.

In 1988, he tried cocaine. "It was almost like a fun thing to do at that
time," he said, "but as time went by it got serious."

Paroled in 1999 after serving seven years for burglary, Mr. Jones began
rebuilding his commercial art business. He painted signs and logos for gas
stations and restaurants in Brooklyn and Staten Island. He approached
corrections officers who once guarded him; they commissioned portraits of
their families.

At some point, he started to use drugs again. Last October, he was arrested
and charged with attempted burglary. He said he faced up to four years in
prison if convicted. "Something triggers it -- aggravation,
disappointment," he said. "I try to escape."

His art, he said, is the one thing that has never let him down. "When I
paint in here I go into a zone; it's like my mind travels," Mr. Jones said.
"It takes me to different places I've been. I visit family, friends. It
gives me a sort of peace."

But it has not helped him overcome his addiction. He has attended only a
single drug-treatment program, which lasted two months. He says he is
willing to try again, something his mother has begged him to do for years.

"He could have as much space as he wanted if he would dwell on it strong
enough," his mother said. "That's his choice, not mine."