By Clare Walker, JAC Intern Charles Finney was raised in Macon, GA, surrounded by creative people of a variety of disciplines. From construction workers, musicians, and his dad’s cabinet making, to farmers and street hustlers, “growing up you had to be a jack of all trades.” As such, he has been creating from a young …

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by Dorothy Maraglino A New Approach To Crime Prevention Since the dawn of civilization, society has struggled to keep law and order. Modern times herald “tough on crime” campaigns. Society increasingly locks away offenders and even kills them at an alarming rate. Once a prisoner is released, society limits anyone who has been convicted of …

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by Dorothy Maraglino Homesick in Prison Every prisoner in this room is suffering from intense homesickness. Contact is essential for us to feel there is a life to go home to. Like these women, I have a family that I used to be a central part of. Now, there are days I wonder if I …

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JAC recently spoke with Carole Alden, a visionary artist currently living in Utah where she is building a creative healing space for women survivors of violence and trauma. Born in Orleans, France, Carole grew up throughout the Western US. She first began her art practice working with clay and bronze, later moving to fiber. It …

Continue reading Carole Alden: The Fish House

“We ball. We bait bishops. We run money early and often. We tell comic stories, inflecting with machismo and swagger the hour when we might be cradling a loved one. We do push-ups in the dayroom and curl water bags for our biceps. We put apples and bread down our pants. We wait for our …

Continue reading Correctional: A Memoir by Ravi Shankar

by Hannah Teich, JAC Web Team Intern I first came across JAC last fall, on an aimless Google search for something like “prison + art.” At the time, I, like all of us, was home, feeling mostly restless and isolated, untethered from the everyday rhythms of normal non-pandemic life. For the past few months, I …

Continue reading On Radical Acceptance, Chosen Family, + Collective Care: Reflections from JAC’s Summer Interns

These days, statistics and numbers about mass incarceration proliferate. We know abuses happen inside prisons and jails across the United States on an inconceivably large scale. We read that the United States incarcerates a fourth of the world’s prison population. These numbers are mind-numbing and shocking, but their magnitude is difficult to comprehend; how well …

Continue reading Hasbrook Galleries: Action and Reaction – Anatomy of the Carceral State

Saturday, June 26. 9:00 PM EST. A round of Zoom applause lit up the screen as we celebrated Jail Guitar Doors’ Go Getta Chris and Blaccson’s encore performance for their session: Songs and Beats, an original performance piece created by system-impacted youth. Despite being virtual, there was an electric feeling in the air that zipped …

Continue reading Reflections on Art for a New Future: JAC National Convening 2021