What Can I Do to Make This Place Better?
Antonio Espinosa is awarded the Visual Arts Fund through the Midway Contemporary Art in December 2019.
Art From The Inside was a creation between me and my wife, Jessica. We were trying to answer the questions: How can we make this place better? How can we turn something negative into something positive?
On July 18, 2018, one of our fellow correctional officers, Joseph Gomm, was murdered by an inmate at the Stillwater prison facility. After this senseless tragedy, the community at Stillwater changed, a lot. A prison, already not the most uplifting place, was now weighed down with intense grief, fear, anger, and sadness. Everything ground to a halt. Everything went into lockdown mode. Hands became idle, and any sense of hope instantly evaporated. The community was forever changed. A prison is a community. Whether you work there or reside there, the trauma deeply impacts everyone; the ones who go home at the end of their shift and the ones who do not.
I leaned into my faith. I prayed. I went to church. Every day I was thinking, what can I do, as an individual, to bring something positive into this community. One Sunday I went to church and heard a powerful word from my pastor. As I walked out, I looked up at the sky and asked God, “What do you want me to do?” I listened hard for his response.
Months passed by. My wife and I took a vacation. At the airport in Mexico, we wandered past a store called Prison Art. We went inside and learned about an organization that works with incarcerated men in Mexico. These men paint works of art on leather goods that are then sold. The money earned helps to support their families during their incarceration. God planted a seed that day. We thought about it. We prayed about it. Then a grant opportunity came from Midway Contemporary Art. We applied in September of 2019. Four months later, we were notified that we were one of the recipients of the Visual Arts Fund just before Christmas.
Our vision for this project is to empower incarcerated artists to embark on a journey towards healing and rehabilitation. Art provides the creative space to imagine new ways of being and to recognize our personal power to change. Art From The Inside will create the opportunity for incarcerated artists to exhibit their creativity while allowing each of us to see that we are all more than the worst thing we've ever done.
We are grateful for the support we have received from the Minnesota Commissioner of Corrections, Paul Schnell; the Warden at Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, Guy Bosch; the Education Director at Stillwater, Ann Deiman-Thornton; and the many other collaborators who share our passion for this project.
We are moving forward with faith that we are doing something good for the Stillwater Prison community and the broader community as well.
