Prisoners are People
JM Manley, “Winter Trackers”. Image from UMF’s website.
October 11, 2023
Jett Jordan, Contributing Writer
Have you ever wanted to see a traveling art show exhibit? At the University of Maine at Farmington, there is an art show that pertains to prisoner’s artwork. “Inside Vision: An Outside Exhibition of Inside Art" is an exhibition that opened on Thursday Oct. 5 and continues until Thursday Nov. 16. This show is free and open to all of the public.
There are multiple goals of this show. One is to show people that prisoners are people too with goals, dreams and talents. Another is for these prisoners to have a voice and a creative outlet to express themselves in a healthy way.
“We hope to get family members of these prisoners to see their loved ones' accomplishments such as the art pieces they have done,” Art Curator Nicole Lund said.
Lund is a UMF graduate and an art teacher who works with people in prisons. She was an art administrative major at the university many years ago. She took a semester off which led to her being out for 20 years until she eventually came back. When she came back, she knew she wanted to do things like work with people in prisons.
While gathering the art, she along with other curators Jan Collins and Olivia Hochstadt reached out to multiple different places and wanted to get the exhibit out to as many places as possible.
“I can guarantee you that none of these people had good childhoods. In some cases, parents were giving them drugs and once they ended up in the system, they became further traumatized. People go into prison and get better. There was one person who served 15 out of 55 years and he’s doing great. He got his G.E.D. and everything. We want to show as many people as we can that prisoners are people too.”
There were multiple art pieces hung up of all shapes and sizes. Pieces included mediums such as charcoal, colored pencils, digital prints, photography and welding. Multiple subjects were covered.
“It’s funny, some of these art pieces are really deep and others are of things like Porky Pig, but that’s what freedom and creativity is all about.”
