At first glance, a small colored drawing by Kushawn Miles El looks like a comic strip. But El said the work is a record of survival and a way to reclaim his story after decades behind bars, as part of the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project’s latest exhibit in Ann Arbor.
The project launched its 30th annual showing in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, organizers said. They described it as the largest and longest-running art show of its kind in the country and said this year’s exhibit features more than 800 pieces made by incarcerated artists across Michigan, using mediums that range from oil paintings and sculptures to colored drawings.
Nora Krinitsky, the project’s director, said the exhibit is “really a testament to the resilience of artists inside prison who continue to create and find new ways to express themselves, even in the most challenging circumstances.” She also said one of the program’s most significant changes for participants is “a new sense of identity and ability to narrate (their) story in a new way and in a different way than how the criminal and legal system has narrated it,” pointing to how creative work can shift how participants understand their own lives.
For El, the project offered more than a creative outlet. He said he used the program as a way to process trauma and rebuild his identity while connecting with the outside world on his own terms. El, a Detroit native, spent 32 years in prison before his release last summer.
El was convicted of first-degree murder in 1994, when he was 18, and was initially sentenced to mandatory life without parole. The Michigan Supreme Court later deemed that sentence unconstitutionally harsh for people under age 21. El said that while he was serving a life-without-parole sentence, “you think you’re never coming home,” and he said that “you have to have something that keeps you going.”
After hiring an artist to create a portrait of him and his siblings for his mother and feeling dissatisfied with the result, El began shadowing other artists in prison in the early 2000s. He said that process started with him asking other artists to teach him and then practicing on his own: “Every day I used to bug them to show me how to do artwork and show me techniques,” El said. “I started practicing, learning on my own and watching (others).”
In 2002, El said he reluctantly submitted his work to the Prison Creative Arts Project’s annual exhibition and was surprised when it sold. He said his artwork became “my voice of reason,” and he described it as “a platform to speak to people outside of prison and show people a different side of people who are incarcerated.” Another element of the exhibit theme—voice and hope—appears in El’s description of what he wanted the artwork to do for him: “I was able to (illustrate) where I started and where I ended up,” he said. “That right there inspired people who’re trying to come home … or people who gave up.”
The Prison Creative Arts Project began at the University of Michigan in 1990, Krinitsky said, in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Corrections. She said it began as a theater workshop in which undergraduate students in the residential college provided academic training and workshops for people incarcerated. Krinitsky said students and volunteers meet weekly with inmates in prisons in southeast Michigan for workshops in theater, creative writing and visual arts.
Krinitsky said prison staff help coordinate access and support the program, including by “chaperon[ing] visits when we go to select art or when we do creative art workshops.” She said staff help recruit people inside to the programs and advertise opportunities to create visual art.
Krinitsky said the project is funded by grants and gifts from donors rather than the state. She said proceeds from art sales at the exhibit are provided to the Michigan Department of Corrections for its Prisoner Benefits Fund for programming, along with the artists, and said the state department did not respond to a request for comment.
El’s story is one of several in the exhibit that highlights creative expression as a pathway to meaning after incarceration. Charles Brooks, another featured participant, has poems on religion, spirituality, fatherhood, injustice and poverty in a digital exhibition produced by the project in collaboration with outside organizations.
Brooks, a 43-year-old Detroit native, said he began writing at age five. He told Bridge Michigan that he wanted to be a rapper but his father did not allow his family to listen to rap music; he said he later discovered rap was “poetry set to music” and “all of a sudden I was a poet.” Brooks was convicted of armed robbery and weapons-related charges and spent 20 years in prison before his release last June.
Brooks said daily life in prison felt crushing: “It’s a very crushing feeling to wake up every day in prison and realize, ‘I’m still here,’” he said. He added that writing helped him manage what he described as “emotions off of my chest,” taking them “out of my pen, onto a piece of paper,” which he said allowed him “to have a clear (mind) and take the time to figure out what my path is.”
Brooks said the project “saved my life and has enabled me with tools to hopefully help other people save theirs,” and he described using what he learned after release to launch Free Thoughtz, a literary workshop for youth impacted by the criminal justice system in January. While the Prison Creative Arts Project focuses on Michigan, organizers said artwork made by prisoners can be found on display in other states, including in exhibits in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and through events in Alabama.