JAINA BERARDI
Special to The Leader
In 2021, a Colorado-based artist named Sarah McKenzie became the recipient of the Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts. Because of this, her project, “To See Inside: Examining Prison Architecture,” was funded by this foundation. After over a year, her project finally concludes with an exhibition in the Marion Art Gallery on SUNY Fredonia’s campus. The exhibit opened with a reception in the gallery on Thursday, Oct.13, which was followed by an artist talk with Mckenzie.
Each year, SUNY Fredonia alumna, Cathy Marion and her husband, Jesse, select a recipient for their foundation, The Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts. The couple are avid supporters of the arts and education, and so their foundation annually promotes and funds projects through a ranking and interview of the applicants. A small group of some of the best artists are then chosen by professionals from SUNY Fredonia. The top three artists are chosen by the Marion Fellowship Circle Members, and the winner is then determined by Fredonia’s administration.
McKenzie is primarily a painter from Connecticut. She graduated from Yale University with magna cum laude, and had a professor who pushed her in the direction of painting after recognizing her talent. This professor also encouraged her to apply to graduate school, so she went on to receive a master’s of fine arts at the University of Michigan.
McKenzie has had her work featured in many magazines such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post and New American Paintings. She has also received several awards for her work, like the Alexander Rutsch Award for Painting and the Santo Foundation’s Individual Artist Award.
McKenzie explained that many of her past projects surrounded architecture, many involving museums. She was drawn to the idea that a museum is a vessel for art because its space and structure are dependent on how we experience the art. She said that the last project she did got her thinking about institutions in general.
“The structures that we build are supposed to reflect our cultural and social values … and the museum represents the top of the cultural ladder,” Mckenzie said.
She then talked about how she believes there is an unspoken rulebook of how to behave in and move through museum spaces.
“So when thinking about other institutions, I thought it’d be interesting to look at prisons because they’re so different from museums in some ways,” Mckenzie said. “But for some reason, I suspected that there would be some similarities in the unspoken rules.”
Located on the first floor of the Rockefeller Arts Center, McKenzie’s exhibit is free, open to the public and will be on display through Nov. 18. McKenzie worked with incarcerated artists for the project. She met these artists through The University of Denver’s Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI).
DU PAI creates programs for those that are inside U.S. prisons to have an opportunity to try their hand at art. McKenzie reached out to this organization at the start of lockdown looking for a chance to voluntarily assist in their programming. DU PAI responded about six months later asking her to design and teach a drawing class with a series of instructional videos starting the following March.
Two-hundred fifty people across all of the Colorado state prisons had signed up for McKenzie’s class, and 18 of them are featured in McKenzie’s in the exhibit.
McKenzie also physically taught a Drawing & Creative Writing class at Sterling Correctional, the largest men’s prison facility in Colorado. The class was co-taught by Matt Labonte, an incarcerated writer who has a leadership role in the DU PAI, after being a consistent member of it for five years. McKenzie explained that he made it more of a seamless transition for her to teach there because he had already established trust with the other men.
Each week, McKenzie would give a prompt or theme for her students to draw and write about, such as their beds and what they mean to each of them. Some of these drawings and poems were featured in the exhibition. The responses were interestingly scattered, as some described their bed as their place of solace, while others denied the bed in question as their bed at all.
McKenzie said the project aims to show that prison facilities are spaces that society has physically hidden away so the general population cannot see them — the tactic of out of sight, out of mind. In sharing her work and that of incarcerated artists, she wants to ask people who wouldn’t typically look inside to consider these artists, their perspectives and the fact that we all have a responsibility to allow them to maintain their humanity.
“We can’t say that has nothing to do with me,” she said.
McKenzie also plans to eventually bring the gallery back to Colorado, so the artists’ friends, families and anyone in their past can see that they still exist, have a purpose and must not be forgotten.
She said that one of the biggest goals of the entire project was to give the artists she featured an opportunity to find purpose, to give them a voice and for them to know that “even if they can’t step outside, they know their art is.”
Like the professor that encouraged her to become a painter, McKenzie also expressed how delighted she was to observe her students in their beginning stages of their artistry. She explained that some of them already had some prior experience while others were “very intimidated to pick up a pencil.”
McKenzie found it rewarding to watch the students realize that they are actually able to create art. Artists who have participated in DU PAI have also told McKenzie themselves how much of a positive change it had brought to their lives and the way that has given them a sense of purpose.
From her art, McKenzie hopes to inspire conversations about the American incarceration system, as many political figures argue for law and order, but often do not consider whether their justice system is actually orderly.
McKenzie explained that the exhibition represents a culmination of the support she received from the Marion Fellowship, and while it’s coming to an end, the project for her is ongoing. She plans to keep the type of work she did with them as the focus for her studio practice for up to the next 10 years.
“I like this work and this world. I still have a lot to learn, a lot more facilities to visit, teaching to do, and people to meet and hopefully collaborate with,” Mckenzie said.
McKenzie left one important lesson to share: “To enact change, you have to dream big.”
She reminded gallery-goers that even if the reality is that change won’t happen tomorrow, you have to envision it at the very least to have something to go after. In the meantime for her, organizations like DU PAI are helpful in the fact that they are doing transformative work now.