By Treacy Ziegler http://fromanopendoor.com/home/ Bill Sell’s self- portrait It was in June, 2013, that Billy Sell hung himself.  I assume a guard discovered him because he had been living in solitary confinement for the past six years. Billy had been in prison for 16 years.  He was 32 years old at his death.  Found hanging in his …

Continue reading The Art of Absolute Loneliness

By Matt Malyon Ted, a local youth, was booked in Juvenile Detention on July 8, 2015, the day of our first ever Underground Writing workshop. In November, Ted and I began to meet regularly on Mondays for an hour. Inside a locked 8 x 6 room, with security cameras and heavy doors, Ted began to …

Continue reading The Restorative Word

Pulled from the Introduction to Die Jim Crow EP Book, available at diejimcrow.com and Amazon.com. by Fury Young It’s been three years since a notebook jot-down outlining the idea for what would become the concept album project Die Jim Crow. I was on the B train to Kingsborough Community College where I was studying history. There …

Continue reading The Roots of Die Jim Crow

About the guest blogger: Michael Zinkowski has taught college-credit writing classes at Oregon State Penitentiary as well as youth correctional facilities in Oregon. Yesterday I was an audience member for a play-in-progress entirely written and performed by inmates at Oregon State Penitentiary. For the last year, I’ve taught college-credit Writing courses there and one of my students …

Continue reading From the Audience and Classroom at Oregon State Penitentiary

by Peggy Lamb About the guest blogger: Peggy Lamb organizes Truth Be Told’s Exploring Creativity program. Truth Be Told is an Austin, TX based non-profit organization that provides transformational programs for women who are or have been incarcerated. Exploring Creativity classes use expressive arts to enlarge the women’s sense of themselves, release pain and express despair …

Continue reading Meeting the Woman, Not the Crime

Dear friends of The Prison Arts Coalition: Building upon a new level of cultural awareness regarding the benefits of arts in corrections programs, we would like to know if an expanded national organization would be a valuable asset to you and the work you do. In these early stages, we feel the association could offer …

Continue reading Seeking input on building a national prison arts association

About the guest blogger: Treacy Ziegler is a regular contributor to the PAC blog, and has been an exhibiting artist for the past 23 years. She studied painting and printmaking for four years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  Before studying art,  Ziegler received a Master in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009, …

Continue reading An Excavation of Seeing

by Sarah Dahnke About the guest blogger: Sarah Dahnke is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, multimedia artist, and arts educator. She creates performance experiences that often feature non-performers, highlighting and celebrating the nuances of natural, untrained human movement. She works with public school students to facilitate the creation of their own choreography and video projects, makes giant …

Continue reading Dances for Solidarity