At the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art is a new show on a subject that doesn’t often show up in paintings or sculpture: prison.
Works from about 40 artists from Southern California and across the country make up “Incarceration,” which runs through March 11. The work in “Incarceration” is for sale, and some of the artists are donating the money from their sales to organizations that support former prisoners and gang members, such as Homeboy Industries.
Laguna Beach artist Leslie Davis and two co-curators organized the exhibit. The artwork is the focus, but it will be complemented by panel discussions featuring a range of people involved with criminal justice, including an Orange County judge, a retired gang enforcement detective and those from nonprofits who work with prisoners and former prisoners. The idea is to employ art to get at the emotional aspect of the topic and include experts to relay the logical facets.
It’s clear from the work that Davis and the other artists in the exhibit feel strongly about reforming the criminal justice system.
“I’m hoping that between the show and the panel discussion, that (visitors), number one, will have a whole different attitude about the people that are locked up,” Davis said. “We have created a nation within our nation … when you have this many people locked up and segregated away.”
The curators chose works that explore many different aspects of the prison system, Davis said. Race and incarceration are one of those. “American Profile #3,” by artist Kamal Al Mansour, is a portrait of a contemporary young black man behind bars.
A closer look shows a row of black prisoners behind him, dressed in prison garb from perhaps the mid-20th century. Behind them is a row of slaves.
Sandra Jones Campbell’s “Grade Three” looks at the effect of the prison system on children. Above her painting of smiling children posing for a class picture is a photo, credited to Steve Liss, of a child sitting alone in a jail cell.
It’s a commentary on the instances of children ending up in prison for minor offenses, often related to emotional problems and learning disabilities, the artist said in her statement.
Santa Ana artist Greg Price has two works in “Incarceration.” “Stress” is made of bands of white glass and looks delicate and light, but with a bulge in the sculpture’s center, it portrays a darker theme. With “Weight,” a precarious-looking stack of shiny, black slabs of glass, Price points to the flaws in our prison system, which is headed to a “tipping point,” he said.
“It really kind of revolves around abstract concepts of distortion, restriction, pressure, the weight that I think is universal to the human experience,” Price said. “Incarceration and mass incarceration is one of those.”
Davis and her brother, Laguna Niguel artist Gregg Stone, who also is one of the show’s curators, made “Solitary Confinement” for the exhibition. The installation piece is set in a dark corner of the gallery.
Davis fashioned an imposing, cross-barred metal door at the back of the space. In the door’s window is a watercolor portrait by Stone of a man, face and neck tattooed and looking unflinchingly at the viewer.
To create an appropriate ambiance for the subject, the curators have used low lighting and ambient music. “Dreams of Herman Wall” will be playing. It’s an atmospheric piece that composer Daniel Rothman created for “Solitary Confinement.”
In a separate room at the back of the gallery is one of the highlights of the show, though there will be a disclaimer of sorts barring visitors younger than 18, Davis said. Inside is something both provocative and remarkable.
Oscar Campos, 41, is an inmate in a Huntsville, Texas, prison. He is coming to the end of his 24-year sentence for killing a rival gang member when he was 15, and is serving more time for other gang-related crimes he committed in prison.
In a three-page letter on the wall, he explains this, growing up in a small Texas town and forming a gang.
Pat Sparkuhl of Laguna Beach is the third curator for the show and curator at the Festival of Arts. He acknowledges that Campos’ work might be too explicit for some, but said that’s part of its power.
In prison, Campos learned to draw with fine detail in ballpoint pen. Sparkuhl and Stone saw his work online and started collecting it and corresponding with Campos through letters.
On the walls at the museum are some of these pieces. They are “viajes,” Campos says in the letter, stories told in collages of pictures.
There are stories of lost love, faith, prison life and sex. Some are graphic, filled with large-breasted, scantily clad women. There are also images of Christ, death, dreams and Campos himself.
“The beauty of being turned off is that it’s provocative,” Sparkuhl said, speaking about Campos’ work. “When you’re turned off, you think about it more.
“What a true artist brings you is an unknown that you haven’t seen before. … It changes the way you see things.”
Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com
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