So Much More Than the Worst Thing
On Friday, August 14, we held the last event for FROM WITHIN at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. FROM WITHIN is a traveling art show and fundraiser featuring original paintings by men incarcerated at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia.
A boy at that last event, maybe 7 or 8, stood in front of the paintings and said he couldn’t believe prisoners had made them. His dad was standing right there and didn’t say anything. So I chimed in. “All of these men are so much more than the worst thing they have done, right?”
Over 3 months and 5 events, a few hundred people saw the work. Almost every one of them said a version of the same thing. Wow, they’re so talented. I loved hearing it. But the surprise in it is worth sitting with. You don’t say wow when something meets your expectations. You say it when something breaks them.
The boy wasn’t being cruel. He was repeating what he’d absorbed. That’s what cultural conditioning looks like when you catch it early.
The show raised $1,500 for ArtVan, a Maine nonprofit that brings mobile art therapy to communities at no cost. That covers 4 months of art supplies for every program they run, reaching roughly 400 people. 6 men inside a Virginia prison helped put art supplies in the hands of 400 people in need about 800 miles away.
Read the full piece on Substack.
Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org
