William Warmack’s biggest problem as an artist is his low supply of materials. He’s a weaver who makes garments and objets d’art, but the cigarette packages he works with are a scarce commodity. He smokes Newport cigarettes himself, which supplies him with one or two wrappers a day. But he says it takes 2,000 wrappers to do an entire vest. Even a small picture frame requires 52 wrappers.
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“If the guard has to spend his time going through cigarette wrappers, making sure there’s nothing in there,” Warmack adds, “then he might miss something else going on, something else being smuggled in.”
While Warmack was in prison, he explains, “I realized that I was learning a craft, a talent that could help me financially.”
“I was falsely arrested and falsely accused and falsely found guilty,” he says, with surprisingly little bitterness. “I was in prison for all that time for something I didn’t do.”
Although cigarette-package weaving may have been around a long time, Warmack says he is the first to “take it to the streets.” His good marketing sense takes him even beyond shops and street fairs. When his brother’s work was featured recently at a group show at Prairie Avenue Gallery, Warmack was there at the opening, too. Wearing a cigarette-package vest and belt and carrying a bra on his arm, he mingled with artists, curators, and collectors, writing down names and phone numbers of prospective buyers.
“I like my freedom. I like to mingle with people.” He says he would like to participate in children’s art workshops like the one at the DuSable Museum, where his brother teaches “sandstone” carving.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jon Randolph.
