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Exhibit showcasing artwork based on life and death behind bars stops in Chattanooga

By Casey Phillips February 21, 2016 4 min read

Photo Gallery

The Art of Isolation: Exhibit showcases artwork based on life and death behind bars

""Handmade Jump Rope." As described by a man who spent 15 years in solitary confinement on death row before being executed in March of 2012. [Amy Elkins.]

Above, "Handmade Jump Rope." As described by a man who spent 15 years in solitary confinement on death row before being executed in March 2012. At left, "13/32 (Not the Man I Once Was)" is a portrait of a man 13 years into his death row sentence, where the ratio of years spent in prison to years alive determined the level of image loss in the piece.

"Nine Years out of a Death Row Sentence (Forest)." A pen pal of Elkins who was 13 years into his death row sentence describes a childhood memory of taking refuge in the forest throughout his youth. This image was constructed out of appropriated images and composited to account for the amount of years spent in prison. [Amy Elkins.]

If you go

› What: Diane Marek Visiting Artist Series featuring Amy Elkins› When: Daily through March 23› Where: Cress Gallery, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 752 Vine St.› Hours: 9:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m., Monday-Friday; 1-4 p.m., Saturday-Sunday› Admission: Free› Phone: 423-425-4600› Artist website: amyelkins.com› Gallery website: cressgallery.org

The title of Los Angeles-based artist Amy Elkins’ “Black is the Day, Black is the Night” is a pretty forthright description of its emotional timbre.

The multimedia exhibit is comprised of real and composite images, drawings, letters and other memorabilia based on the photographer’s five-year correspondence with inmates serving out lifetime or death row sentences in complete isolation. Of the seven men with whom she corresponded between 2009 and 2014, two have been executed and two were released.

Through her own research and their written exchanges, Elkins says her eyes were opened, not just to the inner workings of the American penal system and its application of capital punishment, but also to how inmates’ perceptions of reality and their personalities were altered by their confinement. “Black is the Day, Black is the Night” is an attempt to depict the transformative nature of incarceration for men she only knew through their words and mugshots.

“I really became intrigued about this aspect of being completely removed from society but also just waiting slowly for your death,” she says. “It’s basically like a long-distance portrait that’s constructed in the only way I was able.