Our Prison Portrait Guy Goes Wall St.

Kenneth Calvin "K.C." White never reads the Wall Street Journal. So it's funny that last Friday his photo made it to the paper's  front page and website. That's K.C. on the left, holding a portrait he drew of convicted Wall St. shyster Bernie Madoff. The photo was taken by my Daily News colleague Sarah Glover and re-printed by the Journal.

People Paper readers might remember K.C. from a column I wrote about him in September, just after he was released from Butner Federal Correctional Complex, in Butner, N.C., where he did time for bank robbery and attempted bank robbery in Philly.

K.C., a self-taught artist, was a celebrity at Butner. His murals colored-up the drab walls all over the prison - the gym, dental clinic, cafeteria, even an administrator's office. He also sketched portraits of fellow inmates and perfected the art of drawing reproductions from photographs. His graphite renderings of Barack Obama, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and Tupac Shakur are shaded so precisely, some look like digital prints.

K.C. was a month from release when he met Madoff, who was shipped to Butner to serve a 150-year sentence for ripping off investors. The two men, K.C. recalls, were standing in a medicine line when Madoff asked K.C. to sketch his portrait.

K.C. did the deed and coaxed Madoff into signing it, but he never gave the finished work to Madoff. Instead, he took it with him when he was released from Butner, hoping the portrait would fetch good money on eBay.  Hoping for publicity about his stunt, he contacted the Daily News, and I wrote his story.  Sarah Glover shot photos of K.C. (and produced a fun video which accompanied my story - click the arrow on the story page).

K.C. wound up in the Journal when a reporter there, having read the Daily News, contaced K.C. to ask him about Madoff's life in the Big House. The paper reprinted Sarah's photo, and that's how K.C. landed on the front page.

He's also landed on his feet since my story ran. He's moved out of a crappy West Philly shelter and into a cozy West Philly rooming house, and he's making an honest living painting murals and sketching portraits. K.C. could always use more work, though, so if you'd like to hire him, click here to visit his web site.

As for that Madoff protrait,  it's still for sale. Any takers?