The Art of Grief

Artist statement
In June 2019, my dad was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Three months later, after several sessions of radiation and chemotherapy, he passed away at the age of 70. No one in our family was prepared for this trauma, and I am still processing it after being almost immediately flung into a global pandemic now going on year three. In 2021, during a POC virtual grief workshop with grief guides BACII and The Glorious Hum, participants were invited to write a letter to our grief. It made me think of all the times I'd dealt with death. I was surprised by what I wrote, and felt compelled to share it in case it will make anyone feel less alone in their journey with grief.

Artwork description
"Dear Grief" is an illustrated letter to my grief.

Biography
Alisa Damaso 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.

Artist statement
This painting is my grief and loss of my daughter Angelina M. Soto. She passed Nov. 20, 2003. I haven’t had a chance to grieve over her passing but it is a very hard thing to live with when your own blood leaves this world, innocent of life. She’s in a peaceful place with my puppy Chico. She was the light when it was dark. Made everybody smile/laugh. At the moment justice has to be done for her death. I encourage all my viewers to open up and let out the pain and put the brush to paper. That’s how it heals me in many ways. Thank you all for viewing my paintings.

Artwork description
Watercolor painting split vertically and symmetrically by a gate depicting a sort of separation of worlds. On both sides are two trees and grass in various shades of greens. On the left is a woman with long black hair, dressed in all black clothing, above a tombstone exclaiming, “Why!! Take me not her!!”. On the right is a small black dog and a young girl dressed in yellow clothing.

Biography
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Artist statement
For immigrants grief can come in many forms. It is hard to process grief without access to the rituals and ceremonies that tell our bodies it is okay to let go. To fall into the earth and weep. And as an immigrant, we experience also loss of culture, identity, connection, family, and so much more. I wanted to highlight the small ways grief can also show up, when "a better life" turns out differently than what you expected.

Artwork description
Short snippets of moments of grief immigrants experience.

Biography
Angy Rivera 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.

Artist statement
This was a real challenge for me. I wrote down words, colors and sketched ideas out. I listened to sad music. I thought of sad times in my life of loss. I did not enjoy creating these images nor reliving these moments - and longer periods of grief. I asked my fellow inmates what emotion or words to describe what I had created. Success. They all knew how they felt in similar settings. When you come to prison you lose a lot and it can be overwhelming at first. One must fight thorugh it. Sometimes daily.

Artwork description
This painting utilizes space, muted tones, movement, and depth. The artist paints a confined space resembling a small room. Three walls are visible using the skill of watercolor. These walls have many tones of brown, yellow, and purple. Brush strokes are visible adding movement and life to the artwork, the hand of the artist is clearly seen. In the right hand corner of the room there is a stark white figure sitting on a rigid bed, the figure is outlined in black as darker tones of purple and brown emanate from behind and around them, making it appear as though the figure is sinking into the wall. There is a toilet to the left of the figure, resembling a constricted prison cell.

Biography
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.

Artist statement
This was a real challenge for me. I wrote down words, colors and sketched ideas out. I listened to sad music. I thought of sad times in my life of loss. I did not enjoy creating these images nor reliving these moments - and longer periods of grief. I asked my fellow inmates what emotion or words to describe what I had created. Success. They all knew how they felt in similar settings. When you come to prison you lose a lot and it can be overwhelming at first. One must fight thorugh it. Sometimes daily.

Artwork description
In this painting, the artist employs the power of line and depth to tell a story. The painting is composed of sinuating lines of different shape, size, direction and consistency. The lines follow you to a central point of the painting in which a small white figure with their arms wrapped around the knees in a small black hole, the color yellow radiating off this figure ever so slightly blending into the curved lines surrounding it. As you move outward there are thin black winding lines forming a circular pattern. Beyond the pattern, there are more thin swirly lines highlighting a light green hue. The color palette remains primarily of earthy tones of reds, browns, and blues.

Biography
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.

Artist statement
Poetry allows us to express, in just a few words and images, much feeling. The spareness of the form allows forces the creator to choose their words carefully, "the best words in the best order" as some pundit said, and provides latitude for the reader/listener to fill in for themselves that which is most evocative for them. And yet, the form, the substance remain indelibly there - to convey that which was most important for the creator.

Artwork description
This poem was written to describe what I saw, and heard, and felt at the one-year anniversary service held to commemorate the life, and sacrifice, of a friend’s voice-hearing son.

Biography
Claire Bien, MEd, is a research associate at the Yale University Program for Recovery & Community Health, president of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS)-US, and author of a memoir: Hearing Voices, Living Fully: Living with the Voices in My Head. She also serves on the board of the Hearing Voices Network (HVN)-USA. Claire’s goal in doing this work is to help depathologize the voice-hearing experience and increase understanding that it is the social conditions of our lives that most profoundly affect people’s ability to live fully and with dignity in the world. She embraces the ISPS perspective on the role that unresolved emotion plays in creating the conditions that can lead to hearing voices, and is especially interested in exploring the intersections between psychoanalytical and Hearing Voices Network perspectives on psychosis.

Artist statement
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Artwork description
The artist uses acrylic paints to deliver an abstract experience of engagement for the viewer. The bottom third of the painting is painted in a vibrant orange whereas the top ⅔ of the painting shows a light lavender with more exaggerated brush strokes. The artist utilizes shape and forms bunches of sky blue circles surrounding two larger circles painted in red and yellow. The bottom third shows two figures - one appears to be a woman wearing a blue dress reaching her arm out to an eerie figure draped in black with a crow like face. The artist also adds a lot of life to the painting with his use of shadows.

Biography
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Artist statement
I suffer with bipolar affective disorder type 1. It can be debilitating with suicidal lows and ecstatic highs. The circles represent endless rapid cycling, up one day, down the next - a tangled web of sadness and madness. Finding a common thread among these cycles helps to weave a new narrative by connecting to higher visions and vibrations of colour and form.

Artwork description
The painting expresses the myriad of confusing thoughts which accompany grief oftentimes. The sheer bottomless pit of why’s and how’s and what for’s amidst what can sometimes seem like the endless suffering of grief.

Biography
An artist and designer leveraging the transformative potential of creativity for healing.

Artist statement
from complete broken and destroyed to justify the Life

Artwork description
going from the darkest to the grey

Biography
Dorota Skupniewicz was born in Poland in 1989, at the border of communism and capitalism in the country. Those two systems deeply impact her point of view for the world. Dorota is searching for a new definition of reality, crossing between hard ground (the actual system) and utopia: the Greek definition of the golden middle, which still seems to be an ideal. Dorota has firsthand experience of the Polish mental health system, whose roots are decades old. After years of struggling with her own blurred picture while living in Poland, where she gave up all chances to change surrounding environments, Dorota moved to the UK, where she is able to think clearly from a distance. Sometimes cutting something means growing again. Dorota completed animation studies in her mother country, which she cites as her best experience from Poland: earning skills to express herself. Dorota takes inspiration from anthropology, ethnology, philosophy and upgrading her film knowledge as a student of scriptwriting. She is very grateful to be part of IDHA - as the warrior the Mandalorian says, “this is the way.”

Artist statement
Grief is denied for the accused. It's a sign of guilt or manipulation. In either case, it's labeled "selfish." Wives who killed their husbands in self-defense are not allowed to grieve his loss. Mothers whose car crash took their child's life are not allowed to grieve. A friend who kills a friend cannot grieve the loss. Few will accept a villain also being a victim. Grief is reserved for victims only. Prisoners must stuff their greif and embrace their villain title. They must save their tears until no one is around or until freedom gives them the privacy and right to grieve. They will find neither inside. Any personal loss is considered just on the tab of "debt to society." There is no compassion or empathy given for an accused in grief. My drawing confines all a prisoner's grief to a single tear drop which is all we risk allowing to fall down our cheeks.

Artwork description
The artist uses pencil to outline the shape of a teardrop and fills the teardrop in with drawings and words representing.

Biography
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Artist statement
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Artwork description
Completed in colored pencil this artwork brings out earthy brown tones from top to bottom. It is abstract in design, but a few details can be made out or up to interpretation. In the top left corner, a skull shaped face protrudes between oval shapes. Teeth and eyes are visible within the skeletal form. Moving down the composition, more shapes are constructed, appearing as elongated teardrops reinforced in their bolded bordered lines. The color palette is predominantly brown, with various tones of yellow and purple compressed in the center. The hand of the artist is shown by the visible lines of the colored pencil shading to create dimension.

Biography
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Artist statement
This sculpture represents a memoriam to a loved one lost in a motorcycle accident or a loved one that loved motorcycles but is no longer with us. May they keep on riding.

Artwork description
This three-dimensional sculpture is a black and red motorcycle with details of silver on wheel hub caps, handlebars and exhaust pipes. The motorcycle is showcased on a red and white layered platform that highlights the words, “RIP RIDE IN PEACE RIP” paying tribute to those who have passed in a motorcycle accident.

Biography
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Artist statement
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Artwork description
This black and white charcoal drawing incorporates two faces, a skull on the left and the face of a woman on the right. In the center they synthesize into one. There is a reflective quality to this artwork as the eye of the woman and the skull eye socket remain center to the composition and the remaining face is mirrored separated by a strand of hair from the woman’s head. The hand of the woman is visible, the base of the skull, specifically the chin, is resting in her hand. The hand has long painted square fingernails. The woman has the tip of her nose shaded darker, resembling a painted clown nose. She also has four vertical lines down the left side of her mouth, almost as if she is morphing into a skeletal structure. There are various elements of shading throughout, focusing on the skull– in the eye and nose sockets, as well as the conjoined neck between woman and skull.

Biography
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Artist statement
We made this piece to show the first steps of our system slowly overcoming our old fear and hate towards each other and reaching out instead. We needed to slowly and carefully learn how to communicate and trust each other, to be able to help each other hold the grief and start healing and growing.

Artwork description
A photograph of the Body of this DID system carefully stretching out its hand and reaching towards their alters inside. Paired with a soft pastel drawing of a few of this systems alters on the other side. The alters have different size and colors and also reach out towards the body.

Biography
We're Incanthatus a 31 years old DID system from Germany. Our family has been burdened by trauma for generations and our system was formed very early in childhood. We had an extremely intense and dysfunctional relationship with our dad that shattered our consciousness into a hundred broken pieces. There was no way we could hold him reading us goodnight stories and singing to us a song he made up just for his beloved child in the same mind as him violently abusing us or turning cold and not talking to us for days. He had so many different faces and all of them required a different child to react to it. After moving out, we just wanted to forget...but without knowing anything about our split or Trauma, we ended up turning against each other. Soon we were forcefully hospitalised for self harm and being suicidal....A whole new kind of traumatic environment. 10 years of relatively useless DBT therapy and 25+ mental hospital stays later and we finally got diagnosed with DID. It was like coming home, a home we never had. Finally we could understand that we were broken, but it was not our fault. We could start to come together and help each other heal instead of being at war. Being with our grief about the horrible things we went through and all the time we lost to fighting ourselves still isn't easy. But we have each other now and we are learning to hold our brokenness gently, so new things may grow at their own pace.

Artist statement
I created this piece in two stages. The first stage was performance based and had an individual drowning his sorrows in pills, alcohol, and the catharsis of writing. The second stage was the growth, or blossoming of something new. The words “𝒊 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖, 𝒊 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖, 𝒊 𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖" are left to the viewer’s own interpretation. Whether that is written to drugs, alcohol, or flesh.

Artwork description
Growth is more of a question, what are the things that bring us pain, what are the things which we use to kill that pain, and what can come from the experience of pain?

Biography
Mokhtar Ferbrache is a designer, painter, and multimedia artist. For over 15 years, Ferbrache’s practice explores the freedom of abstraction and representations of life around him, in pen and pencil, design, murals, and participatory installations. Mokhtar is a collaborator and participant in art based prison advocacy work with Dancing Through Prison Walls at Scripps College [Los Angeles, CA] and is a member of the Prison Arts Collective at San Diego State University [San Diego, CA] and California State University San Bernardino [San Bernardino, CA]. He also mentors and assists students re-entering their communities with CSUSB’s Project Rebound. Mokhtar is currently getting his BFA in Design/Marketing and BA in Communications from California State University-San Bernardino, where he has a 3.7 GPA.

Artist statement
It was summer time mid-lockdown 2020 and the George Floyd protests were just getting started, everything felt incredibly chaotic and disheartening. I hadn't really seen any loved ones in a few months and was feeling a lot of anxiety around that. I felt the need to create an image to channel the grief I was feeling from everything happening at the time. I wanted to give my friends and audience an image to give them hope and some kind of visual healing.

Artwork description
Two etheral figures are embracing in the middle of a sky at dusk. This is a digital drawing on a photograph.

Biography
" Nicole Salcedo 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 to 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. "

Artist statement
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Artwork description
A highly-stylized colored pencil drawing captures the face of a clown, suspended atop a lightly shaded background. The clown’s head is outlined in a thick line of dark blue. The clown wears a yellow sailors hat with a small skull “embroidered” on the left side of the brim. His hair, patches of black pencil strokes, pokes out underneath. The clown’s red and black eyes, as well as his red nose, are drawn with vertical strokes, giving them the appearance of melting. A single black and blue tear falls from his right eye as a giant red smile extends across his white face.

Biography
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Artist statement
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Biography
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Artist statement
Each piece represents a span of time. The constructed figure consumes the events associated with those spans, and wonders what to do next.

Artwork description
Little bits of paper randomly cut and glued into a figurative mosaic.

Biography
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.

Artist statement
“I Didn’t Mean To,” an oil pastel series, is an outpouring of grief through the activated nervous system. This series chronicles the lived experiences of their younger selves, ones less armored and more exposed to systems that view mad, crip, disabled bodies as disposable. Captured in the colors of this series are the teary eyes and reaching hands of local teens begging for answers as to why systems so cruel would leave them behind. In 2021, two of Portland’s only teen mental health/substance use treatment programs abruptly closed. This non-consensual patient abandonment forced families to grieve losses and interrogate the ways Whiteness continues to show up in mental/behavioral health fields. The White begs “what is our collective grief guiding us towards?” This series is an active resistance towards erasure of our stories.

Artwork description
Oil pastel series

Biography
Shinjini (they/them) 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.

Artist statement
The text relates to navigating healthcare infrastructures and medical bureaucracy. Based on negative experiences of being hospitalised, the processes and spaces for ongoing treatment for chronic health conditions (including PTSD) can often feel re-traumatising. The drawing is part of a series of drawings that explore the embodiment of trauma, and how trauma can be stored in the cells and the fascia in the body. I want to connect these different types and scales of trauma together, and see the intersection of embodied experience and wider structural conditions.

Artwork description
A drawing-text collage exploring experiences of chronic health conditions (including PTSD) and healthcare infrastructures.

Biography
Sophie Hoyle is an artist and writer whose practice explores an intersectional approach to post-colonial, queer, feminist, critical psychiatry and disability issues. Their work looks at the relation of the personal to (and as) political, individual and collective anxieties, and how alliances can be formed where different kinds of inequality and marginalisation intersect. They relate personal experiences of being queer, non-binary and part of the SWANA (South-West Asian and North African) diaspora to wider forms of structural violence. From lived experience of psychiatric conditions and trauma (or PTSD), they began to explore the history of biomedical technologies rooted in state and military surveillance and control.

Artist statement
I think it speaks for itself :)

Artwork description
This piece encapsulates grief of losing innocence to forced hospitalizations.

Biography
Sophie is a neurodiverse dissociative survivor with over a dozen carceral experiences. She found her way to healing and stability through spiritual practice, Internal Family Systems, yoga and body work. She is currently an outreach Social Worker pursuing a Trauma-Informed Master of Social Work through Winona State University and a Level 1 in Internal Family Systems through the IFS institute. She plans to use her lived experience and education to contribute to the literature on healing for dissociative survivors and is also interested in writing about neurodiveristy through the lens of Internal Family Systems.

Artist statement
This poem was composed at the start of 2021, approaching a year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was reflecting on the idea of normal. Mourning what that meant, while also recognizing it meant nothing at all. A double-mourning. As I have done many times in my life, I found myself contemplating the lived experiences of plants. An old coping strategy, honed in childhood. I wanted them to help me grieve.

Artwork description
A poem about house plants and how they grieve. (Maybe).

Biography
Steven T. Licardi is an Autistic social worker, spoken word poet, artist, and performance activist working at the intersections of art and social policy. He travels internationally using the power of spoken word to create empathic dialogue around, to confront the realities of, and to assist communities in dismantling the stigma surrounding mental health and madness. Since 2016, his ever-evolving performance series #CoupDeMot has been confronting how mental illnesses manifest out of oppressive social systems by tracing the hidden history of mental health treatment in the Western world and juxtaposing those truths to works appearing in his second collection of poetry, 'a billion burning dreams' (STL, 2018), which traces his own mental health journey. Versions have appeared in Vigo, Spain in 2016; in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2018; and Thessaloniki, Greece in 2019. IG/Twitter/Venmo: @thesvenbo. www.thesvenbo.com/ books

Artist statement
"Erasure #13" is part of a series of works using erasure / blackout, a process of excavating poems from within pre-existing text by erasing or blacking out portions of the text to reveal the poems within, in this case the artist's own childhood mental health records. Here, the artist illuminates the liminal space between his own lived experience and the words of the clinician who completed the evaluation. In doing so, the artist invites the reading to mourn with them the loss of childhood innocence, the loss of the client's voice (in this case, the artist himself), and the loss of the evaluators own intentions. The grief lies in unknowing; the awareness of other unnamable erasures that are revealed (or remain hidden) beyond the reach of the erasure / blackout itself.

Artwork description
An erasure / blackout performed in 2022 on an elementary school psychological evaluation completed in 1999 when the artist was ten years old.

Biography
Steven T. Licardi is an Autistic social worker, spoken word poet, artist, and performance activist working at the intersections of art and social policy. He travels internationally using the power of spoken word to create empathic dialogue around, to confront the realities of, and to assist communities in dismantling the stigma surrounding mental health and madness. Since 2016, his ever-evolving performance series #CoupDeMot has been confronting how mental illnesses manifest out of oppressive social systems by tracing the hidden history of mental health treatment in the Western world and juxtaposing those truths to works appearing in his second collection of poetry, 'a billion burning dreams' (STL, 2018), which traces his own mental health journey. Versions have appeared in Vigo, Spain in 2016; in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2018; and Thessaloniki, Greece in 2019. IG/Twitter/Venmo: @thesvenbo. www.thesvenbo.com/ books

Artist statement
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Artwork description
This artwork uses a blended watercolor design of rust orange and royal blue. It is an abstract arrangement with an element of verticality. The edges of the composition have long streaks as if the artist dragged a foam brush to create these vertical lines. The royal blue color is splashed onto the paper and is more pronounced, compared to the orange which is more controlled.

Biography
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Artist statement
Paradise Lost is a theme I've done before in other medium as well as it seems to permeate even my regular work. Most of my pieces involve the things I love and have now lost due to my being in prison. I loved for the outdoors, hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, you name it. Even something as simple as a country drive. When I paint landscapes, fish, animals, etc. there is a tingle of sadness, at least for myself in each piece for a life I lost. It's incredibly similar to my experience in the military. It's not the things we do or the hardshapes we face that cause us the most pain and grief. It's what we leave behind that truly haunts us. The fact that you're not able to participate in the htings we love with the people we care the most about. I added this simple statement to the bottom of my piece to sum it up. "Grief isn't looking at bars all day, it's the things you love you left behind." For me it's not the bars, the handcuffs. The loss of life even. It's the loss of all that's beautiful in my life, the woods and waters, family, and loved ones and missing out on watching my beautiful daughter grow into a wonderful person. From here, grief is beauty.

Artwork description
In this picture, I include a beach with the figures of a woman + girl in the distance weaving and walking the sand in bright red dresses. Long black hair blown back. The figure in the foreground is simply a ghost of a man, a shadow of a shadow. This is a dream that haunts me constantly. My ex + daughter's faces obscured and no matter how hard I try, I can't make it to them. Even in the dream, I feel shame for having put them through this even though they remain supportive.

Biography
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!

Artist statement
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Artwork description
An oil painting depicts a grey figure atop a dark bluish-grey background. The figure is depicted horizontally, facing the bottom of the canvas, from the shoulders up. The figures’ skin stretches, revealing thick veins, ribs, and a spiked spine. It recalls a character from a sci-fi film. A single tear drops from the figure’s eye, vibrantly lit in a neon green hue. This light reflects off of the figure’s arm.

Biography
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.