Donald Oliver Hooker (born December 13, 1965), better known by his street name, C-Note, is an interdisciplinary American Prisoner Artist. A poet, playwright, painter, performing artist, and the King of Prison hip hop, his works have either been exhibited, recited, performed, or sold, from Alcatraz to Berlin. In 2017, Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP), listed him as both America’s and the world’s most prolific prisoner artist.
C-Note was born as an orphan in Los Angeles, California. He was adopted by an African American married couple, Clavie and Paulette (Washington) Hooker, and was their first child. Later, they would adopt another boy they named Douglas, a younger sibling whose mother was white and father Black. Eventually, the couple would have their own child, a girl they named Dion. When C-Note was eight; Douglas, seven; and Dion, six; she died of a brain tumor.
C-Note drew local attention in the late 80s while an inmate in the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, when he sat down for two televised interviews as a part of investigative reporting by then independent Los Angeles broadcast station KCOP-TV. The first investigation involved Cross burning by white officers inside the jail’s Crips gang housing units; while the other pertained to a number of people being interviewed for a televised special regarding the gangs in Los Angeles.
As a prisoner artist, he first came to prominence as Money Mike; the lead character in the 10-minute play, Birth of a Salesman. A play in which he both wrote and starred. Birth of a Salesman was the opening act to the critically acclaimed play, Redemption in Our State of Blues. Redemption was performed at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County in December 2015, and encored in March 2016.
In May 2016, his work Mprisond was part of a first-in-the-nation prisoner art exhibition at the CB-1 Guest gallery in downtown Los Angeles. Through the Wall: Prison Arts Collective, May 14–29, 2016, consisted of works from two California men’s prisons and one California women’s prison. The exhibition is also published in a book Through the Wall: Prison Arts Collective, Prison Art Collective, 2016, ISBN 978-1-36-721324-1.
Since then, C-Note’s artwork has changed lives, saved lives, raised millions of dollars for rehabilitation and restoration, made history in the fashion world and is the first prison artist to have his art work displayed on two billboards.
In 2021, his work ”Incarceration Nation” became part of a work called ICONS: Polaroid-Haring-C-Note, or sometimes referred to as just ICONS. ICONS is a Polaroid x Keith Haring photograph of the “Look Up! Billboard Art Exhibition, Oct. 17th – Nov. 16th, 2021, Silicon Valley, California, that featured ”Incarceration Nation”. The photograph is named ICONS, because it features three icons, American Graffiti/Street artist Keith Haring, American prison artist Donald “C-Note” Hooker, and Polaroid Corporation.
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