All submissions to this exhibit are voluntary and adhere to the guidelines laid out in the UW Libraries Guidelines on Content. We plan to post all submissions received, although there may be delays if we receive submissions that require reprocessing. Each artist has selected one of three Creative Commons licenses for their work so that viewers understand how their art can be accessed and engaged with; this information is displayed alongside each work.
Although we acknowledge the inevitable distancing of a digital exhibit, we also feel this platform offers many possibilities. For instance, the exhibit will shift over time, reconfigured as themes emerge in our ongoing collection of works. We hope that this flexibility will encourage return visits, as works in the collection are juxtaposed in new ways, producing new responses and understandings. Our initial contributions have, temporarily, been arranged in alphabetical order by first name.
There are two questions that have been particularly difficult, and we have reached an uneasy compromise on both of them. The first relates to monetary compensation for the artists.1 We respect the value of the work submitted and are aware of the potential for exploitation of the artists, a question inherent to any creative work, inside or outside of prison. We are also aware of the limitations we, as a student organization, face in terms of raising, tracking, and allotting such funds adequately and fairly. In the end, we removed all financial considerations from the exhibit: no one is being paid for their artistic contribution and no funds are being raised from the display. All work carried out to create, collect, review, and post the exhibited art has been undertaken by volunteers. Second, we can include only the first names of the artists, and must omit last names. This DOC policy is meant to acknowledge and reduce the trauma of re-victimization for viewers encountering this site. We fully understand, however, that this also results in the marginalization of the artists, further separating the artist from the viewer, indeed, further de-facing the artist.
In a couple cases, before our submission process was formalized, we received a few submissions where the artist signed their full name or added identifying details to the actual artwork. In these cases, with the artist’s permission we have digitally blurred out this personal information.This editing is indicated in the description of the edited artwork displayed in the exhibit. We acknowledge that such editorial intervention compromises our intent to present the art with as little filtration as possible, but we believe that the art itself is powerful and deserves to be seen, even in its altered form. We are grateful for input from many sources regarding these difficult issues, and we hope that our solutions are ultimately outweighed by the impact of the artworks themselves.