15 Prison Art Projects

Image via Complex Original

Year: 1996
Location: Worldwide

Grandpa isn’t likely the first image that pops into your mind when you think of a prison inmate, but the elderly represent a healthy portion of today’s incarcerated individuals. (Of the more than two million Americans who are behind bars today, approximately 35 percent of them are beyond middle aged.) Since 1996, photographer Ron Levine has made it his mission to shine a light on these oft-forgotten members of society with large-scale portraits of older inmates accompanied by their quotes and recollections. “Many of their stories are those that ring true today about fits of anger, rage, foolish steps they took in their youth that have brought them to where they are now,” say the project’s organizers. “Others are remorseless. ‘Prisoners of Age’ seeks a balance of the two dispositions, through images and text, lending insight into the lawbreaker's proclivity to commit crime.” The project has traveled all over the world, from Alcatraz to Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol Penitentiary to Australia’s Fremantle Prison and beyond.

Year: 2012

Location: Angola, La.

Art is alive and well at Louisiana’s Angola Prison, where good behavior begets the opportunity for inmates to participate in “hobby craft,” a multidisciplinary art program that encompasses everything from painting and woodworking to taxidermy and furniture building, and often includes the use of special tools and/or private studios in which the would-be artists can work. (The results of which are sold at the prison’s annual rodeo and art fair.) For photographer Patrick Simpson, the opportunity to document this program resulted in an intimate series of portraits known as “Artists of Angola.”

Year: 2014

Location: Biddeford, Maine

With a focus on architectural photography, Trent Bell may have been surprised with how personal his "REFLECT Project" became. In early 2013, Bell learned that a friend of his—a husband and father to four children—had been sentenced to 36 years in prison. Haunted by what compelled this man to make the decisions he did to put him behind bars for so long, Bell decided to pay a visit to the Maine State Prison in order to better understand the reasons why criminals act as they do, and convince them to take a long, hard look at where they went wrong. The result is an arresting and enlightening series of portraits in which each prisoner is photographed against the backdrop of a letter they’ve written to their younger selves.

Year: 2002

Location: Various locations

Founded in 2002 in conjunction with Auburn University, “The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project” brings a host of educational opportunities, including classes in poetry, creative writing, drawing, and fine art, to prisoners statewide in Alabama in order to contribute to their positive growth and development. A key part of this program is “Art on the Inside,” a traveling exhibit of work produced by participants (mostly drawings and photographs) that has made its way to many different locations.

Year: 2014

Location: Philadelphia

Philadelphia’s historic Eastern State Penitentiary housed some of America’s most notorious criminals, including Al Capone. And while many prison art projects focus on the perspective of the inmates themselves, Cindy Stockton Moore’s new exhibit, “Other Absences” pays tribute to the victims of the landmark prison’s most famous residents. The site-specific installation features 50 portraits of the murder victims. While that may seem like a large number, it’s just a fraction of the total number of individuals who were killed, thus making an even larger statement on those who could not be included.

Year: 2014
Location: Philadelphia

In 2009, Jesse Krimes was sentenced to 70 months in jail for possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute. Whereas other inmates might count the days down watching television or reading, Krimes channeled his inner artist and found a way to create with the only tools he had at his disposal: sheets, copies of The New York Times, hair gel, and colored pencils. “Through medieval references, the panels suggest a contemporary version of Dante’s heaven, earth, and hell where politicians, celebrities, and offenders serve as archangels, angels, and demons that establish ideals and artificial norms in our culture of celebrity worship, where impracticable role models are lionized in the media,” Krimes says of the 39-panel mural. He smuggled it out of the prison piece by piece via the USPS over the course of his incarceration. It’s currently on display at Rutgers’ Zimmerli Museum through December.

Year: 2013
Location: New York

“Watch your back!” seemed to be the message street artist JR intended to convey when he revamped a few of the walls at Rikers Island with the eyes of some of its inmates. While it wasn’t necessarily an exhibition for public consumption, the French artist made his point and achieved his goal. “I wish no one jail time,” the artist noted on his Instagram page. “Spending time there talking with the inmates, they make you realize [the] price of freedom. The young kids I met were all in search of inspiration, anything that can break the routine of their day. I asked them what an eye on their wall would change? The one who helped us pasting it says he never had the chance to see or experience the power of art. And by pasting this few strips of paper on the wall he just felt part of something and that was enough for him. He told us how he’ll remember all his life this moment.”

Year: 2014

Location: Washington, D.C.

Commit a federal crime in Washington, D.C. and you could be sent to any prison in the country, regardless of how far away it might take you from family in friends. This is why it was D.C.-specific offenders who became the subject of artist-educator-organizer Mark Strandquist’s "Windows From Prison" project, which posed a simple question to inmates: “If you could have window in your cell, what place from your past would it look out to?” The response came from students at George Mason University and Duke Ellington High School, who did their best to fulfill the participants’ requests and mail them back the requested image. Earlier this year, the inmates’ letters—and responding photos—were blown up and displayed on the GMU campus.

Year: 2013

Location: Philadelphia

Did you know that nearly every prison visitation room in America features a wall mural painted by the inmates that serves mainly as a backdrop for photos taken of the inmates by visiting loved ones? Nearly all of these walls feature some sort of expansive landscape, be it a white sand beach or a bustling city skyline. It’s a juxtaposition that artist and arts documentary producer David Adler deemed worth of further exploration, as scene in his "Visions of the Free World" exhibition, which was, quite appropriately, projected onto the cell walls of Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary, a prison-turned-tourist attraction.

Year: 2012
Location: Ossining, New York

Since 1996, Rehabilitation Through the Arts has been incorporating the use of creative arts—including theater, dance, creative writing, and visual arts—as a method of “social and cognitive transformation behind prison walls.” Each year, they host a number of events and programs to showcase the effectiveness of their mission. In 2012, they hosted a multimedia event inside Sing Sing with the theme of “A Few Good Men,” which included a dramatic performance of the Aaron Sorkin play (which was later adapted to film) and an accompanying art show in which participants drew personal and historic heroes.

Year: 2014

Location: Haverford, Pa.

There are two ways to look at every situation: from the inside, or from the outside. In the case of “Prison Obscura,” which was unveiled at Haverford College earlier this year and made the move to California’s Scripps College earlier this month, the viewer gets both. Curated by Prison Photography editor Pete Brock, “Prison Obscura" offers an inside look at life behind bars with a series of audacious, prisoner-made photographs that ask as many questions as they answer about the American justice system.

Year: 2009

Location: Fremantle, Australia

Throughout its 136-year history, Western Australia’s Fremantle Prison advocated for the positive effects of art therapy on rehabilitation and allowed many of its prisoners to express themselves creatively. The only space that was off limits to these budding artists were the prison’s public spaces, but all that changed shortly before Fremantle closed its doors in 1991 and transformed itself from a maximum security prison to a venerable cultural institution. During that time, inmates were given free reign to paint when and where they saw fit, whether that was the wall of their own cells or the exercise yard. Fortunately, Karin Calvert-Borshoff was there to document it all, resulting in this black and white photography exhibition, which took place, appropriately, at Fremantle Prison in 2009.

Year: 2014
Location: Ithaca, New York

This artistic collaboration between Prisoner Express and An Open Window brought the ideas of isolation and community to the forefront when it challenged 40 prisoners living in solitary confinement to re-create a small section of the Mona Lisa (which was simply identified as a “mystery painting”), all of which were then patched together to create an eight-foot tall version of da Vinci’s iconic masterpiece as a statement on the concept of unity, which was displayed at Cornell University earlier this year.

Year: 2012
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

A project by the Koestler Trust, a London-based organization which encourages inmates, secure patients, and other detainees to express themselves through art, “Insight & Outlook” was a month-long exhibition of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and creative writing sourced from a number of Scotland’s prisons, criminal justice services, secure hospitals, and children’s homes, which was overseen by artist David Shrigley.

Year: 2014

Location: San Francisco

In the six months leading up to Ai Weiwei’s new exhibition, Alcatraz has provided a temporary home to “Telling Our Stories,” a diverse collection of works created by members of the San Quentin Arts Project, written works from the Brothers-in-Pen group of inmate scribes, led by Zoe Mullery, and a striking series of portraits of these writers by Peter Merts. They’re all on display in the main cellblock of Alcatraz Island.