(Per)Sister
How to express the six year prison experience of Andrea Martin, one of 30 formerly incarcerated women who chose artists to tell their stories!
Through phone conversations, videos and photos we came to know and care about each other, and with paint, collage, and cutouts, I put together the poetry of her own words in a 8 X 5 foot canvas including images of herself and of Marilyn Wilson who had rescued her and her possessions from a rainy New Orleans street corner.
The exhibit, entitled (Per)Sister: Incarceration Women of Louisiana, was created at the Newcomb Museum in New Orleans in 2019 and transplanted to the Ford Foundation Gallery in NYC in 2020. On opening night, the women, who accompanied the show to New York, joined the crowd and spoke of their histories behind bars.
