Incarcerated from 1987-1995 for crimes he committed while in the thrall of addiction, he began to embroider as part of his effort to express a personal style within the constraints of uniformity imposed by prison garb. His first piece was a logo for a sports team he followed, and he soon made other logos on commission for fellow inmates who wanted signs of affiliation—national flags, hearts and flowers—to send to loved ones. As he became more accomplished and found inspiration in a book on Impressionist art, Materson had an epiphany: his work did not need to be mimicry, but could be more serious; he could create his own designs and tell his own stories.

In contrast to the degradations of prison life, the humanism of Materson’s art is palpable. He comingles the real, the recovered, and the imagined in intricate pocket-sized parables of debasement and redemption. What we see from the outset is the persistence of memory, the unfolding of family history, and the characters from his childhood that were important to him, such as the professional athletes he followed. The dichotomy between hope and despair, a light and darkness, is like a psychological chiaroscuro, with heroes like Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson and Joe DiMaggio, and the reminiscences of The House on York Road to Once a Young Man and Dad in Central Park, circa 1940, versus the detention dramas of Morals Charge, Waiting for the Man andAlmost Free… At Last. Some of his recent works have hard-hitting socio-political implications, like Theater of Abomination (2022), a scathing response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision.