Opening Night Lecture: Stitching Time + Give Me Life

On Thursday, September 11, at 5:30 p.m., Jeffrey Greene, Program Manager of Community Partners in Action’s Pr*son Arts Program, will deliver the opening night talk, preceded by brief remarks by Maureen Kelleher, co-founder of the Social Justice Collaboration Quilts Project. Together they will celebrate the opening of a pair of exhibitions in the Walsh Gallery: Stitching Time: Social Justice Collaboration Quilts Project and Give Me Life: CPA Pr*son Arts Program.

The talk will also be livestreamed. Click here to register for a reminder.

“White. Or Grey. Boring. Depressing. Very cold, all the time. It was awful. Small. It made me feel small sometimes. But art makes me feel like a big person again. It gave me life.” - Renee Peterson

Since 1978, Community Partners in Action’s Pr*son Arts Program has been working inside Connecticut prisons to positively and constructively change the lives of the incarcerated and the Pr*son environment by encouraging unique, personal, and evolving artistic pursuits. Artists are asked to make art that only exists because they exist - that transcends the Pr*son, Pr*son life, and the stereotypes that Pr*son affirms. The resulting work is often extraordinary. Exhibitions and publications serve to dignify this work and connect people in Pr*son with their loved ones and the public in the world outside. Community Partners in Action is celebrating its 150th year working with those affected by the criminal justice system in Connecticut.

About the exhibition: Stitching Time features 12 quilts created by men who are incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Pr*son. These works of art, and accompanying recorded interviews, tell the story of a unique inside-outside quilt collaboration. The exhibition focuses our attention on the quilt creators, people often forgotten by society when discussing the history of the U.S. criminal justice system. Also on view in the gallery will be Give Me Life, a selection of works from women artists presently or formerly incarcerated at York Correctional Institution, a maximum security state Pr*son in Niantic, CT, courtesy of Community Partners in Action (CPA). The CPA’s Pr*son Arts program was initiated in 1978 and is one of the longest-running projects of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1875, CPA is celebrating 150 years of working within the criminal justice system. Click here for more information.

Image: Yongmi Olsen, Breaking Through Narrow, pen and colored pencil on Bristol board, 2008. Courtesy of the artist and the CPA Pr*son Arts Program

Host or Publisher Fairfield University Art Museum