“What Cannot Be Taken Away,” a collaborative art project orchestrated by artist Evan Bissell, illustrates the various impacts of incarceration on Bay Area families. Its purpose? To invite those affected by incarceration (which is all of us, really) to come to a deeper self-understanding and perspective on our prison system.
Bissell met with two groups — four youths whose parents are or were incarcerated and four fathers (not family relations) in the San Francisco jail — separately every week for five months. The artistic collaborators went through a process of free writing, artistic creation, and meditation in order to develop a vision for their portraits. To learn more about the “What Cannot Be Taken Away” collaborative art project, read Alana Price’s blog post and explore artist Evan Bissell’s website.
