About the Project
In March 2022, Justice Arts Coalition and the Institute for the Development of Human Arts launched “The Art of Grief” to demonstrate the myriad shapes that grief can take, as well as the many ways that we can tend to our grief. The project centers the power of creativity to make meaning from and heal through grief, in contrast with medicalized approaches. An open call yielded 40+ submissions, which can be viewed via an online gallery.
About the Event
On Monday, July 18 from 6-8 pm EST, JAC and IDHA are hosting a virtual lived experience showcase to spotlight works submitted to “The Art of Grief,” with the hope of transmuting our collective grief into new narratives that celebrate the power of mutual support and community action. Ten artists or designated loved ones will present a curated selection of works, and attendees will have the opportunity to engage with and reflect on the art in small groups. We invite you to join us for an evening of creativity, solidarity, and connection – a communal effort to make the intangible, tangible.
This project particularly seeks to uplift the voices and experiences of those currently or formerly incarcerated in institutions. This includes, but is not limited to, those held in jails, prisons, psychiatric facilities, nursing homes, and group homes. JAC coordinated the inclusion of works from incarcerated artists, and IDHA coordinated the inclusion of works by psychiatric and trauma survivors. This event is open to anyone who has been impacted by the experience of grief. It seeks to bridge dialogue about grief experiences among activists, artists, survivors, family members, advocates, mental health providers, and other community members.
Register in advance via Eventbrite to join. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about how to join.
Donations
There is a suggested $10 donation for this event. Donations of any size help cover the costs of art supplies and shipping for incarcerated artists, as well as equipping the event with closed captioning and ASL interpretation.
Access
ASL interpretation and live closed captioning will be provided. The event will be recorded and shared with all registrants within a few days of the event alongside the caption transcript and a resource list.
Artists
Shinjini Bakshi
Shinjini is a queer, non-binary South Asian-American clinical social worker with lived experience as both a consumer and provider of mental health care. They work towards a vision of anti-carceral mental health and collective liberation.
Alisa Damaso
Alisa is a designer, illustrator, and writer living in San Francisco, California. Her bold and colorful work explores identity, joy, healing, and social justice. Alisa is author of the zines What’s Coming and Growing Up Valley. When she’s not making stuff, you can find her running at Golden Gate Park, listening to books and spooky podcasts, and singing in the band Vincent Gargiulo National Park.
Joshua Earls
I create paintings and drawings that I hope that viewers will be able to connect with on some emotional level. Though my subject matter may be diverse, each of my paintings have been of a person, a scene, an animal or an object which pulled on the strings of my heart in some way. Whether that is by eliciting a nostalgic longing, portraying an often-felt emotion or simply evoking awe in its beauty, they all somewhat represent me.
Matthew Harbin
Mostly I work in watercolor, pastel and charcoal but am branching out into oil wow and so far love it. I mostly, by necessity, have to work from pictures, but I sketch often to build my skills for drawing from life. Largely I do landscapes and wildlife. Sometimes I incorporate people into my work as well. Before coming to prison I spent most of my time hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and just plain spending whatever time I could outdoors. Since for the time being I’m stuck here most of my work reflects memories or even just wishful thinking. Dreams of what my life had been. Since I can’t currently live those out it helps to at least express them through art. I also have a love of lighthouses that make up a large portion of my architecturals. I inherited this love from my mother as well as from me being a sailor in the U.S. Navy. Most of my work is expressionist/impressionist with some abstracted reality. ← If this is not a proper art term, it should be!
Brian Hindson
Regardless of what I’m painting, I really hope the viewer is left with some sort of impact. Be it a prison themed work or free world subject. I attempt to make you see it a little differently, maybe even better than the original.
Arlis Mara
Arlis is a psychiatric abuse survivor, writer, and radical social work student. They find joy in creating and their emotional support hedgehog: Thorazine. You can find them on social media at @notyourquietsurvivor.
Angy Rivera
Angy is a queer Colombian immigrant living in NYC. She is the Co-Executive Director at the New York State Youth Leadership Council. You can find her on social media @AskAngy.
Nicole Salcedo
Nicole is a Cuban American interdisciplinary artist born, raised and based in Miami, Florida. Salcedo earned her Bachelors in Fine Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010). Salcedo’s practice is anchored in drawing and expands out into various mediums, such as film, design and sculpture. Salcedo’s entire body of work revolves around the deepening of our connection to our bodies and the earth; creating energetically charged imagery through meticulous mark making that become portals into more subtle realms.
Cuong Mike Tran
I’ve always dabbled in drawing most of my life. As a kid I could look at a picture and draw what I saw. As I got older, school and work took priority; art was placed on the back burner. Forward some years and I find myself in prison. With a lot of time to sit and reflect, I picked up drawing again.
I’ve seen many talented artists in here working with graphite pencils and acrylic paints. I wanted to stand out, so I started to build and sculpt figurines out of whatever materials I could find. I didn’t have the faintest clue as to where and how to start. I fell back onto my mechanical background, constructing skeletal frames out of paper and cardboard lunch boxes. I then applied soap over the frames, creating “muscle and skin.” I would then paint over the dried soap using hand-me-down acrylic paints. Digging around, I was able to find scrap materials such as old t-shirts, silver burrito wrappers, and pen barrels (just to name a few things) and turn them into accessories for my figurines.
Things have snowballed from there. I’ve become more proficient at using the materials available to me (translation: junk) to make artwork. To date, I’ve made over 80 pieces here in prison, the major ones being a functioning carousel, a remote control go-kart, a scale sized Chevrolet impala, a 2 foot tall demon, and a post-apocalyptic diorama.
Always up to a challenge, I’ve recently taken up painting with acrylics. I am not formally trained. I’ve never taken an art class. I’m completely self-taught, so I believe that my work is described as ‘outsider art’ (ironic, because I’m currently in prison). As such, I’m severely limited by the availability of material, workspace, and inspiration. I am forced to be resourceful and resilient despite the physical and emotional constraints. So I like to think of myself as a ‘shackled artist.
Art has been very therapeutic for me. It allows me to free myself despite being physically restricted. In an environment where my every move is monitored and controlled, my ideas, creativity and imagination are the only things that are limitless. Art is freedom; it allows me to put a part of myself onto paper or in a sculpture. Art also allows me to show society that I am still a human being, that I am not defined by my mistakes.
Skills: I am not formally trained in any medium. However, I have found a natural affinity with graphite pencils and charcoal. Recently, I have started to paint using my acrylics. My sculpting abilities consist of forming skeletal frames using found materials and covering them with soap instead of modeling clay. I have a strong mechanical background. I am also fluent in English and Vietnamese and am teaching myself Spanish through books and full immersion. I play the acoustic guitar as well.
Sean White
I typically develop figurative pieces on two dimensions. Primarily I focus on oil, though also graphic narrative and these trippy mosaic-like collages (most frequently portraits). The Bauhaus doctrines have had great influence on my process and subject matter. I have read Albers and Kandinsky a couple of times, and even have versions of Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Interactions of Color in my possession (the Kandinsky I found as an e-text in our public domain library). All of that, though stems from Goethes Farbenlehre which if you remove the 19th century science, is brilliant in its own right. Of course, even the two-dimensional Bauhausler theories extend from the initial efforts to deconstruct the picture plane Cézanne made. So, I would say my work explores illusions in many respects, though it follows a linear branch of modernism a la Fernand Léger. I mean to say illusionism as it relates to the picture plane. Comic books have also heavily influenced my perception of art. Little boxes containing images and a few words stacked together on a single page to forward a story. The combination fascinates me.