Donald ‘C-Note’ Hooker – Breaking Down Walls of Captivity
By Space Coast Daily // August 16, 2023
Art knows no bounds, and C-Note took this saying on a very serious memo. No matter where you are or what circumstances you are put through, recognition that lies under your fate will reach you anyhow.
Art itself is a blessing in disguise for both the artists and the people living in the presence of it. Art is considered a form of expressive freedom that releases stress from an individual’s mind. While the wonders of an artist can sweep any person off his feet, not all are gifted with the right skills. Art can be expressed in many forms, and an artist is usually born under exhilarating conditions.
Making one realize the potential he has developed due to the ongoing situation and his urge to express his thoughts in an explicit manner. Born in Los Angeles, California, on the 13th of December in the year 1965, Donald “C-Note” Hooker faced ordeals since the day he opened his eyes as he was parentless. Later on, he was adopted by a married African American couple.
He had an adopted brother and an adopted sister Dion, who died when C-Note was only eight years old.
In 1999, C-Note came across the most unexpected incident that changed his life entirely; first, he lost his non-biological mother, and just the year prior, he was sentenced to prison for 35 years to Life.
His only crime was that he, as a Black man felt insecure and tried to save himself from a homeless man following him continuously, compelling C-Note’s insecurity to threaten him with a knife.
Despite all the odds against him, C-Note was determined that nothing could stop him from creating masterpieces; he took this series of unfortunate events as an inspiration to grow. His masterpieces gained significant attention, and he was also listed as both America’s Most Prolific Prisoner-Artist and the World’s Most Prolific Prisoner-Artist by Google Search Engine in 2017. He drew the interest of many when he was featured in 2 interviews with the Los Angeles broadcast station KCOP-TV, which was a fragment of the entire investigational process. His story moved the general populace, only motivating him to make more appearances. Later on, he was seen in an interview that was specially conducted on the gangs of Los Angeles.
C-Note’s innovative mind instilled him to write a 10-minute play, The Birth of a Salesman, and successfully perform it as an actor, too, coining more popularity as a prisoner artist. Birth of a Salesman became the opening act to a play called Redemption in Our State of Blues at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County, in front of activists’ politicians, and professionals. This performance received more praise and critical acclaim from viewers and critics. His works Modern Girl, Diana, Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Tears of the Mothers, Today We Are Sisters, Strange Fruit, The Criminalization of Our American Civilization, Can’t Black Lives Matter Too??? and American Negro: A Migrant Story, further added stability to his position in the artistic field earning more respect and fame.
In September 2016, C-Note donated art for fundraising to the Partnership for Re-Entry Program (PREP) for their 12th annual prisoner art Exhibition, The Art of Incarcerated: Faith and Hope Beyond Prison Walls. He donated his first political work of visual art, Black August-Los Angeles, at the same event the following year. Black August – Los Angeles has now become, one of only 12 artworks in Wikimedia Commons’s extensive Library to be featured in it’s Black Cultural Archives. C-Note’s experience of ordeals has motivated him to donate multiple positions to save lives and has raised millions in public-private funding for criminal justice, as he harbors great sympathies for those who are suffering significant traumas through the hands-of unjust law.
His boldness and courage to speak out the truth in the form of art and poetry have moved the general populace to a great extent, due to which his work has been exhibited, recited, performed, and sold from Alcatraz to Berlin. Despite being incarcerated, he has been featured in Prison Action News, California Prison Focus, and has been in People Magazine, Public Television-Los Angeles (KCET), ABC-Los Angeles (KABC), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’s Artbound, Darealprisonart Inside CDCR, KCET’s Departures and San Francisco Bay View.
The sequence of ordeals that instilled C-Note to craft masterpieces was still not over for C-Note. His life came crashing down when he lost his father, Clavie, due to complications with cancer.
In 2018. And a year later his brother Douglas died of suicide, leaving C-Note in solitude. Yet despite all adversities, C-Note stands tall and ready to face life.
