From Prison to the Art Gallery
The New York Times, September 22, 2022: From Prison to the Art Gallery
“In 2010, in the recreation center of the Fairton Federal Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison for men in South New Jersey, an art collective was born.
“Five years into a 13-year sentence on drug-related charges, Jared Owens rediscovered his childhood love of ceramics and taught himself to paint. He was overseeing the art room by the time Gilberto Rivera, a graffiti artist, and Jesse Krimes, with an art degree from Millersville University in Pennsylvania, transferred to Fairton to finish their terms. They shared art magazine subscriptions, supplies, ideas and camaraderie in resistance to their circumstances.
“With the help of Owens and Rivera, Krimes covertly gathered prison bedsheets that he collaged with New York Times images, using hair gel and a spoon to lift and transfer the printed ink onto his contraband canvases. He smuggled pieces out, one by one, through the prison mail room. Over three years, the subversive practice evolved into a monumental mural, a Hieronymus Bosch-like allegory of heaven, earth and hell, that he titled ‘Apokaluptein: 16389067’ — Greek for apocalypse coupled with Krimes’s inmate number. It stretched 15 feet by 40 feet when he was finally able to assemble the 39 segments for the first time upon his release in 2013, after serving six years on drug charges.
“‘This isn’t about some outsider coming in and doing an arts program — it was them on their own, seizing that space, whatever dignity they could craft, and then carrying that with them when they came home,’ said Alysa Nahmias, director of ‘Art & Krimes by Krimes,’ a film that will be released in theaters on Sept. 30 by MTV Documentary Films and streamed by Paramount+ starting Nov. 22. It chronicles the making of ‘Apokaluptein’ and Krimes’s first five years out of prison as he struggles to forge a career in the art world with the support of friends. One of them is Russell Craig, who found art at age 7 while living in the foster care system. After serving 12 years on drug charges at prisons in Pennsylvania and Virginia, he met Krimes when both were newly released and working as assistants with Mural Arts Philadelphia’s restorative justice program.”
Additional reading:
Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Restorative Justice program
