Throughout the spring of 2019, the Prison Education Program is exhibiting work by students and artists inside Oregon’s prisons on the University of Oregon campus. The exhibition, Emergence: Art from Inside, features work by twenty artists incarcerated at Oregon State Penitentiary and Oregon State Correctional Institution – both in Salem, Oregon – and youth from the Serbu Youth Detention Center in Eugene. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Visual Arts Team and the UO Prison Education Program.
Some artists represented in Emergence have taken many classes through UO’s programming inside these institutions, while others have not. The goal of bringing these pieces together is to offer a venue for the work and talent of incarcerated artists to emerge into a space of higher education. Likewise, to offer a glimpse into the common threads and variations emergent across work being created inside, with an opportunity for incarcerated artists to describe what art making means to them.
Emergence will be on view throughout spring term in the Erb Memorial Union’s Adell McMillan Gallery (1395 University St, Eugene). Join us for an opening reception on Thursday, April 18th from 6-7pm. Light refreshments will be served.
Read more about the exhibition and view the art here.