BRAVE NEW WORLD
continued
a supplement to the zine anthology of Stories and poems by glendale COMMUNITY college students, published may 2021
In response to Nicole R. Fleetwood’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
The artwork presented here was envisioned and brought to life by students in my Humanities 117 class, “Creativity, Culture, and Society,” at Glendale Community College as a response to art historian Nicole R. Fleetwood’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration. Fleetwood’s book features artwork made by incarcerated artists and those affected by incarceration, and is a searing condemnation of the American prison system, which currently imprisons over two million people in this country. The book honors and gives voice to these astonishing art works and their makers. My students were invited to reflect on our discussions of the book and artwork by responding creatively, in an art form of their choosing, whether dance, music, poetry, narrative, comics, or visual art. I was wowed by the many passionate and thoughtful pieces my students submitted, but here are a few that stand out for their insight, imagination, compassion, and technique. Each piece is introduced and contextualized by the student who made it.
-Kate Martin Rowe
Glendale Community College
You can find the Brave New World zine anthology here.
Patrik Arakelian
Glendale
This photo was taken while I took a trip to San Francisco during our spring break. The view from the Alcatraz mess hall gave me the idea of what inmates would see on a daily basis, a tree signifying freedom, a broken widow giving them hope of being free once again. A connection I tried to make was between the artwork made by Maria Gaspar. Her art was the ones where she would digitally manipulate the walls of the prison to be able to look inside the prison. The idea of my photo came from here but instead of being on the outside, I was on the inside peering into the outside world.
Marta Sanchez-Gallardo
Inspired by Fleetwood’s 2020 Marking Time I developed this piece called “My Time is Your Time.” This piece is a mixed media combination representing both the beauty, solitude, and power encasing art on the inside. I developed this piece to represent penal space both as a box (in squared inside 5 walls). The cement jungle surrounding these walls. Nothing but more cement to be seen for miles. The colors are somber yet on one of these walls there are pops of color—pieces of art that bring beauty in an otherwise dark environment. In prison, there are no traditional art supplies in sight. Nothing but the imagination and a lot of time. Time, Time and more Time as represented by the watches glooming above and in front of those incarcerated in this box. The time is hanging by a thread- there is no beginning nor end to the thread as well as the penal time of many of those incarcerated. Especially those in solitary confinement. There are many shades of brown and black that mark this background -all genders -but one-color BROWN AND BLACK. The models representing those incarcerated are beautiful, all sharing one similarity: their brown skin (considering that black and brown folks are incarcerated at higher rates than any other race/ ethnicity). There is one wilted yellow mum to be seen in the background. Representing both hope, sunshine, family, friendship, and sorrow. It is colorful yet wilted, a slight reminder of the outside. Something that art does, especially portraits of the loved ones of those incarcerated. There is money in the form of dollar bills representing the for-profit nature behind mass incarceration as well as change which represents the exchange of art for commissary, the undervaluing of prison art work. The interchange between prison officials and the incarcerated receiving pennies for their work. The space is covered by bars limiting freedom. There are two buildings to be seen (which look beautiful) representing those profiting from the incarceration economy.
Andrea Rosas
Sylmar
In Marking Time, one of the first ideas that made me inspired and curious was prison architecture. It was eye opening to see how the structure of the buildings is designed to have a sense of fear in that community, meanwhile inside those imprisoned are being stripped from their identity. This truly made me reflect on other structures and why they were originally built in specific locations; as a result, the focal point of the collage is the 710 freeway. The history of this freeway has caused a huge division in both these communities economically and socially. I included maps of the red lining and single family neighborhoods and how this was created to keep communities segregated. Lastly, I included images of the forceful removal of families for the building of the Dodger Stadium to show further how freeway placement is affecting our community.
Mateo Zettor
Los Feliz
For this creative assignment, I decided to make a digital illustration (made with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop) representing the feeling of isolation and incarceration. I decided to represent a cell that looks vertical and small, with only one window we can reach only by stepping on something. This element reflects a rupture with the world: you cannot see the outside directly. It reminds me of the fact that inmates and ex inmates are treated differently. I painted the room with dark colors and only one source of light coming from the outdoors. To continue, I tried to draw the illustration as a point of view of a prisoner. Putting myself at the place of a prisoner allowed me to focus on the idea of incarceration and isolation. At the bottom of my illustration, you can see a paper on which the inmate painted his old school (in reality I represented GCC!). He painted the school with only his memories. To finish, you cannot see any human signs on the illustration. No hands holding the painting, no bed, no toilets, no clothes, and no door. For me, it reflects the dehumanization of prisoners, as we’ve seen in Marking Time.