The Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners is one of the largest exhibitions of art by incarcerated artists in the country. Each year, faculty, staff and students from the University of Michigan travel to correctional facilities across Michigan and select work for the exhibition while providing feedback and critique that strengthens artist’s work and builds community around making art inside prisons.

Visual artist D. Ashton recently contributed an incredible collection of drawings and paintings to our Gallery. PAC asked him what inspires his work. This is what he shared with us: Having gotten certification in art teaching as well as majoring in art and art history, I have been lucky to have seen and studied all …

Continue reading Artist statement: D. Ashton

By Treacy Ziegler Still life drawing by prisoner David “….tear the memory from my eyes” – Tom Waits In prison, where time can be ignored, the prisoner Joe says he no longer looks at a clock, “I don’t think about time. What difference can it make to me when I’m serving life without parole? Every …

Continue reading Still Life In Prison

"A lot of people in society view people in prison as big, hulking, tattooed killers. They can’t fathom the thought of them as humans that age, get sick, and die in here like people do in society."

By Treacy Ziegler I’m in the deputy warden’s office for an interview; I want to volunteer as an art teacher in a maximum-security men’s prison.  I sit facing the deputy’s desk while she reads my resume. As with many artists’ resumes, mine begins with a list of the solo exhibitions.  After 20 years as an …

Continue reading What the Warden Doesn’t Know

By Treacy Ziegler Prisoner Jerome Washington, drawing still from the animation Moth and Light created by prisoners primarily in solitary confinement, and based upon Bradley’s moth When Bo was released from prison, the guards took bets predicting as to how long he would last on the outside.    As a volunteer art teacher in the prison, …

Continue reading Chained To Repetition

by: Peggy Lamb, Exploring Creativity Coordinator for Truth Be Told Rca, Krystal, Brandi, Kathy, Linda and Nancy. Six women in the white garb of inmates and I sit in a circle in the spacious chapel at the Hilltop Unit in Gatesville, TX. They are in the Female Sex Offender Treatment Program. We are here to …

Continue reading Journey to Self

By Treacy Ziegler We seek truth in many things and demand absolute truth when someone has done wrong. “Who did it?” is the first question asked after a crime, followed by “how” and “why;” the primary questions determining identity, causality, and motive of a crime Identification is a strange thing. It is a paradox of revelation …

Continue reading Prison’s noose of absolute truth