Paving new path
After 40 years in prison, vet finds freedom in art
One day scrolling through images on the internet, Willie Weaver-Bey came across a picture of an aging African-American man with piercing blue eyes. The man was wearing a “Vietnam Veteran” hat. A note in the image read, “Thank you for seeing me as a veteran and not a homeless man.”
The image and its message resonated with Weaver-Bey, an Army veteran who served in Germany. Weaver-Bey was homeless, sleeping in the black van he bought for $600. The picture was part of an ad campaign for Volunteers of America. He picked up a brush and started to paint. His piece, “A Veteran, Not Homeless,” earned first place in the pastels category at the 2016 National Veterans Creative Arts Festival.
In the summer of 2015, Weaver-Bey finished serving 40 years in federal prison for possession with intent to distribute drugs. He was released from prison and sent on a bus to Milwaukee. The city wasn’t his home. He’s from St. Louis but had been in Milwaukee when he got arrested.
In 1993, about 20 years into his sentence, he was trying to do something positive with his time in prison. For a year, he had watched another prisoner paint and desperately wanted to learn.
“I always ask, ‘Hey, Bobby, teach me how to paint.’ He never had time,” Weaver-Bey said. One day, he gave Weaver-Bey a canvas, some paints and old brushes.
He worked hours creating his first painting “Passage,” an abstract work that shows a slave ship traveling through a fishing village. He showed it to some of the other guys and, Weaver-Bey said, they laughed at him.
“The guys in jail can be really cruel,” he said.
Weaver-Bey continued to work on his painting and learning about art. Every time he earned an extra few bucks, Weaver-Bey bought an art book or some supplies.
“I didn’t want to be anywhere in a room where people were talking about art or different genres of art, and I was sitting in there being a head-nodder and not really knowing what they were saying,” he said.
Finding himself back in Milwaukee, he integrated himself into the community.
Weaver-Bey joined Fresh Perspective, a collective of black male artists in the area. He connected with Project Return, which helps people transition from prison, and moved into a halfway house. He found a job as a custodian for the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, through the VA’s Compensated Work Therapy/Work Program. He
bought a home in Sherman Park and moved in at the end of December.
One of the first artists he connected with was Della Wells, the city of Milwaukee Arts Board’s Artist of the Year in 2016. Wells actively works to bring together African-American artists in the city. Wells and Weaver-Bey talk art together, and she likes his enthusiasm for establishing himself as an artist.
“A lot of people wait on things to happen,” she said. “Not Willie.”
After the unrest in Sherman Park last summer, he brought together a group of artists to paint a mural in the neighborhood. When an image of a black man wearing a prison jumpsuit painted in the East Side’s Black Cat Alley sparked controversy over its depiction of black incarceration, Weaver-Bey offered his counsel to the young artist. WeaverBay’s work is featured in a visual art exhibition at Milwaukee Youth Arts Center as part of First Stage’s production of “Welcome to Bronzeville,” a play celebrating the neighborhood’s history. The works are on view from Jan. 13 through Feb. 5.
Going through the paintings at his home, Weaver-Bey talked about what he was processing while creating different work. One, a brightly colored abstract drip painting, Weaver-Bey did after he found out his nephew had been killed by a drunk driver while riding his motorcycle.
“My art started as a means to get out of the way and not get caught up in any trouble, and it ended up being a savior for me because for years I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and didn’t know it,” Weaver-Bey said.
In the last 25 years, Weaver-Bey estimates he’s painted thousands of works. About 1,000 are with him in Milwaukee. Another 3,000 are in California with his sister.
Hundreds of pictures on his phone of people and nature serve as ideas for paintings.
“Everything to me is art,” he said. “I never look at anything without seeing a painting in it.”
He gets choked up thinking about his journey. “I used to tell myself that I would come home and this is what I will do,” he said. “(Prison) would be my past and never will stop me from doing my artwork.”