Save the date for a series of events surrounding Let’s Get Free 7th art show and fundraiser. We’re planning art demos, gallery tours, and a panel discussion with international political prisoners.
The show will be on display at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
The deadline is coming up to submit your art and poems! Let’s Get Free’s 7th Art Show is a fundraiser, a contest for artists and poets in prison, and a month-long occasion for creative communal gatherings and artistic celebration. Get excited!
This year’s theme:
This Is Me
How can art help you express the complex parts of yourself, your world, and your experience? How does our unjust carceral system impact you? How can justice transform the way we see ourselves and others?
The show will open in November of 2024 at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Call for visual art and poems from artists on both sides of the prison walls
This year’s theme:
This Is Me
How can art help you express the complex parts of yourself, your world, and your experience? How does our unjust carceral system impact you? How can justice transform the way we see ourselves and others?
Let’s Get Free invites artists and poets to create work that represents you. This year’s theme was suggested by Sheená King, who is on our prison advisory board. Our committee chose this theme because knowing each other, and letting ourselves be known, is part of how we build and strengthen our movements.
The theme is expansive; it can be interpreted many different ways. Whether you choose a realistic, surreal, abstract, or other approach, this year’s art show focuses on space for sharing ourselves with each other. “Let’s Get Free” is a call to all of us, to get free together. Because no one is free until all of us are free.
Let’s Get Free’s 7th Art Show is a fundraiser. By submitting art or poems to the show you are consenting for your art to be auctioned and sold to raise money to support Let’s Get Free. By submitting artwork and poems you are consenting to allow us to post and use your artwork to raise awareness on different platforms. We will credit you and share any posts we make with you! Any art that is not auctioned will be saved and sold in our “cash and carry” store the following year.
This is a contest. This year we are hosting a contest solely for artists and poets in prison. We consider all art from people outside of prison an offering of solidarity in support of the movement to end mass incarceration.
The show will open in November of 2024 at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Let’s Get Free’s Creative Resistance committee has been busy, and we’ve got TWO big updates about art shows!
Our permanent art collection will be on view at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater lobby gallery in Pittsburgh, Thursday, February 29 – Saturday, June 8. There will be an opening reception.
We’ve announced the theme for our 7th annual art show and fundraiser: This Is Me. The submission deadline is August 1, 2024.
Visit creative-resistance.org for all the details, including:
Alongside our art show, this is our second year including poetry. 70 poets from the inside have submitted poems! A booklet of poems will be available for free at the show, and you can read them online here.
Art as a tool for liberation has been a central element of Let’s Get Free’s work since its inception. The art shows have steadily built advocacy for the release of deserving individuals from Pennsylvania state prisons and have created conversations and collaborations that invite meaningful reciprocity between the prison walls.
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Contact: etta cetera: 443-603-6964
Press Release
Email: letsgetfreepa@letsgetfreepa
Website: creative-resistance.org and letsgetfree.info
Let’s Get Free teams up with Concept Art Gallery in Regent Square, for a new exhibit called Picture A Free World. Art will help us imagine, strategize, and continue our movements for freedom.
Over 60 artists from prison and 30 artists in solidarity have created work across various mediums, including cross stitching, paintings, sculpture, and photography that all considers the question: What is a free world for you, and for others?
There are over 100 pieces of art up for auction benefiting the work of this local prison advocacy group. The auction starts on July 7th and will last three weeks until Monday July 24th at 8pm. People can bid in person at the gallery or online from home. All money raised supports the work of Let’s Get Free.
First time participant from Colorado, Cedar Mortenson submits an illustration with colored pencils that connects issues of forgiveness, environmental justice, and ending gun violence.
She writes, “I recognize the inherent right to life for all living creation. We exist in tandem with each other and every other living thing. I used gold leaf paper befitting a golden, free world, and my color choice is a tribute to all beautiful tones of brown behind bars from cream, to mahogany. I used multiple languages because the message is universal/ Education is liberation. Everyday I become more and more free.”
Zhi Kai Vanderford is incarcerated in a women’s prison in Minnesota and has served close to four decades behind the walls. This is his second year participating in our show. Zhi Kai considers his art “protest art” and is consistently thought provoking.
“I had a hard time encompassing all that freedom would mean to me. For example, this is a no touch facility, so I haven’t had a hug in 5 years. I will be having a visit soon and remedy that. But the concept is not easily quantifiable, to be able to go to a door and open it, a fridge, a night time sky, petting animals, etc. So I sent you my first piece called ‘self-inflicted injury’ as incarceration is my fault. In my work, I have sewn my eyes and mouth shut but in my mind’s eye I see my potential life.”
🌟July 7th Friday 4 – 9 pm Opening & Auction Kick Off
Auction closes Monday July 24th 8pm. Online and in person auction. Food, Drink, Cheap Art Sale, Quilt Raffle & more.
🌟July 8th Saturday 2pm Amachi Pittsburgh
Performance by the Amachi Pittsburgh Ambassadors
🌟July 21st Friday 5-7:30 Dorothy Burge
Quiltivism Presentation starts at 6:30
🌟July 22nd Saturday 2 – 3:30pm – Art, Imagination and Liberation Panel Discussion @ Carnegie Museum of Art
🌟July 23 Sunday 2 – 5pm – Artmaking w/ Dorothy
Quilt inspired Message Making with Dorothy Burge
In partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Art, the weekend of July 21 will be action packed! Friday night starts off with an artist talk by Chicago based quiltivist, Dorothy Burge. Dorothy is a fabric and multimedia artist and community activist who uses her quilt portraits in tandem with movements to end police brutality and criminal injustice.
Saturday’s panel – Art, Imagination and Liberation will feature Mariame Kaba, Nicole Fleetwood and Dorothy Burge in conversation. This event will take place in person at the Carnegie Museum of Art with online options.
Full list of Events, Auction/Contest Info and Online Gallery is available HERE
Alongside our virtual art show, this is our second year including poetry. 70 poets from the inside have submitted poems! A booklet of poems will be available for free at the show.
Art as a tool for liberation has been a central element of Let’s Get Free’s work since its inception. The art shows have steadily built advocacy for the release of deserving individuals from Pennsylvania state prisons and have created conversations and collaborations that invite meaningful reciprocity between the prison walls.
###
Contact: etta cetera: 443-603-6964
Press Release
Email: letsgetfreepa@letsgetfreepa
Website: creative-resistance.org and letsgetfree.info
Join us for a screening of Across the Walls followed by discussion: 2nd Chances Keep Us Safer
February 18, 2pm -4pm, Saturday
Carnegie Museum of Art Theater
4400 Forbes Avenue | Pittsburgh, PA
Access Notes: Wheelchair accessible. Captions on film. Wear a mask. This event is Free.
2nd Chances Keep Us Safer – Film and Panel Discussion
Long prison sentences are not keeping us safe! Join us for a big screen viewing of Across the Walls A film featuring Avis Lee and Paulette Carrington were released from life sentences after each serving over 40 years. This panel following the film will invite you to consider how second chances can actually make our communities safer, more loving and collectively thriving. Hear the stories of people who are doing just that, returning citizens who are building pathways home for the people they left behind and what impact they’re making for us all.
Speakers:
Ricky Olds, Executive Director of the House of Life
Richard Garland, Executive Director of ReImagine Reentry
Terri Minor Spencer founder of Colorful Backgrounds EXPO
Across the Walls: 20 minutes
Filmed and Edited by Njaimeh Njie
Film Screening 2 – 2:20pm
Panel Discussion 2:30- 3:30pm
Reception with Light Refreshments – 3:30- 4pm
Across the Walls is a documentary film that offers an intimate glimpse into the experiences of women sentenced to life in prison without parole in the state of Pennsylvania. After decades of activism and community building, recently Avis Lee and Paulette Carrington were released from life sentences after each serving over 40 years. As they adjust to life outside, they’ve kept their focus on organizing to end life without parole, and helping the women they left inside be released.
The film stages a conversation between Avis and Paulette on the outside, and five women who are still on the inside. Using interviews, found footage, and landscape cinematography, the film assembles a story about the women’s interior lives, against the backdrop of spaces they’ve inhabited and spaces they’ve been taken away from. Never straying from the women’s points of view, Across the Walls is a meditation on memory, and manifestations for a free future.
Call for Visual Art and Poems from artists on both sides of the prison walls
This year’s theme: Picture a Free World
Pierre Pinson, member of Let’s Get Free’s Prison Advisory Board, offered this theme. The theme is expansive. It can be interpreted many different ways and can connect to work you have already made or inspire new work. Picturing a Free World is an act of imagination in itself, and it will take creativity for us to get there. Art will help us imagine, to strategize and to continue our movements for freedom. What is a free world for you, for others? Perhaps it is literally being released from prison, maybe you consider system wide changes that would promote mass liberation, maybe you depict a small detail of what it looks like to feel or be free. What is your definition of Freedom? From what are you trying to free yourself? How are you trying to get free?
The show will open in July of 2023 at Concept Gallery in Regent Square Neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Over the years, LGF has gathered art from our annual art shows and from years of collaborating with artists in prison.The biggest bulk of our art came from our 2020 End Death By Incarceration themed art show. We’re continuing to add pieces.
Now, we’re making some of this art available to be borrowed as a collection! The Let’s Get Free Permanent Collection can be borrowed to give voice to people in prison and create dialogue wherever it may be. You can borrow one piece, several pieces or the whole collection.
To see the art and learn more about borrowing, visit the Permanent Collection on our Creative Resistance site.
We are enthusiastic to announce Let’s Get Free’s 5th annual art show featuring artists and poets in and outside of prison. This year’s show is themed EMPATHY is the seed, TRUTH is the water, SOLIDARITY is the bloomage, and will be presented in person at the Brew House Gallery as well as on-line. The show will open Friday November 19 from 6:00-9:00 pm, and will run through December 19.
This year’s show features 34 artists in prison and 29 artists in solidarity expressing a range of media, from watercolor to cross stitch to sculpture. First-time participant Marilyn Dobrolenski submitted a beautiful piece entitled “Harmony,” which features a lush and verdant wetland scene with water lilies, done in acrylic paint. Marilyn turned 69 this year and is one of over 70 women serving a life sentence over the age of 65. #LetGrandmaGo
Elena House-Hay submitted a thought provoking piece of a mechanized device that is exploring ideas about “truth.” Elena shares: “Being an artist in prison functions to make art my hard earned salvation. It is restorative, unshakable hope. If my art can be free – of prison, depression, and fear – so can I. And that is the promise, the lure, and the most ambitious expression I can seek.”
Kal-El, one of 5 transgender artists participating from prison, shares a vibrant painting that celebrates the existence of many genders. The experience of trans people in prison is often left out of conversations about mass incarceration. In our efforts to create less distance between the prison walls, Empathy is the Seed uplifts marginalized voices who can teach a lot about what is needed to build a more just world. Kal-El, currently serving a life sentence, discusses his experience of being an artist: “I see color when I listen to music or feel emotions. I thought everyone had this ability. I never knew that I could put those colors on to a canvas and people could see what I was feeling that day. Sharing these feelings verbally is difficult. A painting, to me, is like telling someone when I’m sad, mad, etc..”
Alongside our virtual art show, this is our first year including poetry. Over 40 poets from the inside have sent in poems! Look forward to at least one poetry reading during the show. Other events include:
Full list of Events, Auction/Contest Info and Online Gallery will be available at creative-resistance.org
The Art Auction begins on opening night and runs through December 10th. People can bid in person at the gallery or online. Winners will be able to pick up their art on December 19th or schedule pick up at a later time. All money raised supports the work of Let’s Get Free. Money will be used in printing and shipping for our newsletter and Daughter’s magazine, copious postage needs, direct support for people coming home, like driving lessons and art supply scholarships for people on the inside. There will be a series of limited edition prints available to people who sign up to become monthly sustainers.
Art as a tool for liberation has been a central element of Let’s Get Free’s work since its inception, and its annual art shows have steadily built advocacy for the release of deserving individuals from Pennsylvania state prisons and have created conversations and collaborations that invite meaningful reciprocity between the prison walls.
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Contact: etta cetera: letstgetfreepa(at)gmail.com
Website: creative-resistance.org and letsgetfree.info
