The Art and Art History Department are pleased to announce a two-site exhibition featuring collaborative projects with currently and formerly incarcerated men and women. Work can be found at ASIS gallery in Sage Art Center and the Gallery @ the Art and Music Library in Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester.

An artist reception with project coordinators Mark Strandquist and Courtney Bowles will be on 4/4 from 5pm-7pm at Sage Art Center.

Mark Strandquist and Courtney Bowles have spent years using art as a vehicle to help amplify, celebrate, and power social justice movements.  Their media campaigns and immersive exhibitions have helped advocates close prisons, pass laws, train an entire police force (Richmond, VA), and connect the dreams and demands of communities impacted by the criminal justice system with tens of thousands of people. They believe that stories matter, that changing public perceptions is needed if we want to truly transform systems in progressive and human-centered ways. 

To this end, their work has reached wide audiences through exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, galleries across the United States, as well as public spaces, parades, prisons, and many non-traditional exhibition sites. Their work has been featured in the NY Times, NPR, Washington Post, PBS, and VICE.  They currently direct the People’s Paper Co-op in Philadelphia, PA, the Performing Statistics project in Richmond, VA and in 2017, building on fellowships from A Blade of Grass and Open Societies Foundation, began the Reentry Think Tank.