Finding Hope Within

Finding Hope Within: Healing & Transformation Through the Making of Art Within the Carceral System
Guest-Curated by John Vincent, A Revolutionary Press
(2023 Special Exhibit, August 10–October 14, 2023, part of regular admission)

Finding Hope Within features art that has emerged through the Carceral system. It combines art made by incarcerated artists in facilities in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine—from poetry and other writings to visual art and sculptural pieces—and art made collaboratively between incarcerated artists with non-incarcerated artists on the outside. 

In her book Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Nicole Fleetwood writes, “Prison art is part of the long history of captive people envisioning freedom—creating art, imagining worlds, and finding ways to resist and survive.” 

This exhibition posits art making as a transformative, healing, and cathartic practice and highlights the intensely human instinct to create as a way to transform one’s relationship to community, to the environment, and to the self. A spark of hope for the future emerges through the art of creation. 

Viewing this art, abstract conceptualizations about prisons become tangible. Finding Hope Within challenges common narratives about incarcerated individuals and the practices of our Carceral system at large and invites viewers to consider art as something that can transcend physical and psychological barriers. 

Co-curators of the exhibition include Heather Newcomb of Vermont Works for Women, Ashley Messier of Vermont Women’s Justice and Freedom Initiative, Olivia Hochstadt and Jan Collins of Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, Ellie DiMauro of the Concord Prison Outreach in Massachusetts, and Laura Carey of the New England Innocence Project.