Stars and Bars Jail Cell
8 ½” x 11” (framed size: 17 ½” x 20 ½”)
Collage of construction paper, watercolor paper, book images, sharpie
2019
$850
She wore the moniker “felon” as she ambled up the steps to Healthy Haven, her newly assigned halfway house. As she turned around and looked down the hill to her former neighborhood, she caught a glimpse of an imagined life and all its potential now gone. Here she was. No right to vote. No right to meaningful employment. No protection from usurious fines. She wasn’t a citizen anymore; she was an outlaw. Already subjugated by the criminal justice system, she now faced a life of segregation from both her neighbors and society at large.
Ninety-five percent of those imprisoned in the United States will be released. The formerly incarcerated have paid for their crimes by serving time yet they will continue to have major restraints placed upon them. In over forty states the government charges the formerly incarcerated for their public defender, their room and board during incarceration, and requires them to pay for the electronic monitoring they are ordered to use. Many employers ban them from employment outright; others make them reveal their felon status. Ex-prisoners often lack support systems or skills with which to build sustainable lifestyles. Additionally, they often carry myriad, significant health problems resulting from the conditions endured in prison. Half-freedom unbounded to justice places the formerly incarcerated in a conveyor like system of recidivism and re-incarceration.
P2P (Prisoners to Paper Dolls) explores ideas around the lives of the formerly incarcerated. It includes a series of oil-painted portraits of ex-prisoners, designed and sewn paper doll like clothing, and collaged jail cells utilizing family photographs, archival criminal and personal documents, as well as information collected in transcriptions and sound recordings.
Isolated, alone, and marked by their current status and past experience these individual case studies provide the raw material for a life-long pursuit Cartledge has had as both a lawyer and an artist to investigate, deconstruct, and come to terms with utopian ideas of justice in the face of its continued and inevitable misinterpretation, manipulation, and all-too-often its conspicuous absence.