((PKG)) COURT SKETCH ARTIST
((Banner: Art in the Courtroom))
((Reporter: Anna Nelson))
((Camera: Max Avloshenko))
((Adapted by: Philip Alexiou))
((Map: New York, New York City))
((BANNER: For 45 years, court artist Marilyn Church has been documenting history through her sketches.))
((NATS))
((Marilyn Church, Court Sketch Artist))
I can remember seeing when I was a kid, seeing in a magazine, drawings that an artist did in court and thinking, I just can’t imagine doing anything that’s as important as that.
I’ve made these notations in court that then I can define more.
When I got out of school, I thought I would be a fine artist but I needed some way to earn money and so I started doing fashion illustration and I had been doing that for about three, four years when this happened.
I wasn’t a television watcher. I didn’t know about artists drawing in a courtroom, the idea of drawing from life happening at the same time in court.
I love drawing in court. You know, a lot of times I’m in court, court is over. It can be over in four minutes and an arraignment in three minutes. It can be a matter of seconds that you see the defendant walk in, turn and face the judge. You know, your eyes have to be alert and glued every second.
Oh, this is brown because white is a difficult color for the camera and also because the courtroom is brown and also because it’s a color and I can have more color. I started it and a lot of artists copied me.
This is [American author and criminal] Jack Henry Abbott. [Novelist] Norman Mailer was instrumental in freeing him from prison because he was a writer and he thought he was a great literary genius who shouldn’t be in prison and the day he was out, he murdered somebody.
This is one of the early cases I did. [Serial killer] David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, and it’s a day he was hearing demons speaking to him and he came into the courtroom and he was handcuffed and suddenly he started screaming. All the court officers rushed over to subdue him and the whole scene was over in about 10 seconds.
When I’m out of the courtroom, I’m still obsessed with these cases and I feel I have to paint them and paint them in a way without the restrictions of when I was in the court I had to be more objective and here I can just listen to my brain and react passionately about what affected me the most. But these cases live with me all the time.
I go in on commission, you know, but not as much. And sometimes my heart beats, like I hear [drug kingpin El] Chapo’s going to be in court and I think, Oh my gosh, it’s a big case. Should I? But then the painting takes over nowadays, yeah.
It’s the last place that artists really record history and in the end, that’s what we have that preserves history, is all the art that’s made through all the ages. You know, it’s the art that they look at to know what happened in ages before us.
