Material Reimagined
"Alphabet Wall Crumble," Roberto D'Avanzo
Each prison has its own distinctive material environment, a dynamic ecology shaped by the physical structure of the facility and grounds, the pulsing of human and non-human life within, vendor contracts, and variations in the regulations that restrict and control the goods that flow in and out. Artists, utilizing a combination of conventional art supplies and repurposed and found materials, are fascinating interpreters of this carceral material environment. They demonstrate how vibrant mutable matter will always exceed the prison’s attempts to narrowly define and contain it, and to instrumentalize it as a form of deprivation.
Objects considered useless and without value, to “free world” folk, like leaves and spiderwebs floating silently in a breeze or discarded empty pill jars, in another world of constraints, are seen by creative minds as valuable supplies that can be transformed into works of art to be cherished, gifted, or sold. Even before being transformed, trash is already being reimagined by an artist. Clear plastic containers and hard candy, when combined with ink pen tubes and wires become sheets of glass for windows and other finishing touches for paper mache vehicles or toothpick houses. Winter-dried leaves and branches are turned into magical scenes, like those found in the works by artist Timothy Forshee: Northern Flicker, Purple Bifold, and Russian Sage.
Particularly inventive material transformations can be seen in this section of the exhibition by artists from Women’s Huron Valley, a facility that supports a variety of art-making opportunities and informal creative communities. In her Butterfly Effect, The Texan weaves a mosaic-like canvas, with multi-colored strips taken from magazine pages, that dizzyingly confounds positive and negative spatial relationships in her acrylic painting. Sarah Mora offers a playful riff on ‘new media’ in Accessories—A Three Piece Set, extracting materials from deconstructed commissary electronic equipment to make mod-looking jewelry.
Such intentional artistic reimaginings of the ‘stuff’ of everyday prison existence can also point to ways that carceral material environments are not sustainable for human and planetary life. Artist Dameon Spencer utilizes repurposed materials to offer a broader critique of prison disposal practices in Recycle or Die. An eerie death head representing the earth aflame is collaged onto a prison policy statement on “Environmental and Waste Management.” Spencer also presents an environmental manifesto that concludes with more rigorous recycling practices recommended for the Michigan Department of Corrections.
We invite you to appreciate the thoughtful manipulation of materials in the exhibition, and the rich meanings that are communicated materially. Brilliant orange plastic-laminate Cheetos packaging, in artist Willie Harris’ hands, morphs from Trash to Treasure, enfleshing his comic Cheetah Muscle weight-lifter, all the while reminding us that prisons are notorious nutritional deserts. Next time you’re throwing away a plastic container, a broken wire, or ink pen, look at it a bit - maybe the creative voice inside you will decide to speak up.
By: Megan Holmes and Martín Vargas
