FRESH + ERIN

Rootbound

Mixed media installation

Visual artist Lennell “Fresh” Martin and poet Erin Sharkey designed the installation Rootbound based on their shared experiences of children who experienced parental incarceration. On the carceral side of the gallery, Fresh draws charcoal portraits of his and Erin’s fathers; “rendering in raw charcoal on monotone paper represents the real life of peoples trapped in the colorless, sterile environments with no windows, fresh air, natural or soft light, or other human comforts: ‘We are the only life we see in prison,’” says the artist. The drawings extend past a gray border, representative of the wall space incarcerated individuals can utilize in decorating their spaces.

Following the themes of space and autonomy, below the portraits is a property bin filled with the belongings the SEEN “inside” artists and collaborators have had to leave behind in periods of transition; all of their belongings must fit inside two property bins the same size as the one on display. On the healing side of the gallery is another property bin, this one holding a growing tree. After the exhibition closes, this tree will move to The Fields at Rootsprings Retreat Center, a liberating space for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists, activists, healers and community. The nearby monitor, resting on the platform of a deconstructed cage, shows a birdcam with a colorful livestream of birds at an outdoor feeder.

The viewer may write about what belongings they would keep in their two bins in a digitized poetry machine that uses the creativity-generating game “exquisite corpse” as the format. The artists encourage viewers to reflect on the ways they hold space for the one in four Minnesotan children who experienced parental incarceration, and the ways they create a place for the people coming home after years of separation.

ABOUT SEEN @ WAM

SEEN is a WAAC exhibition featuring currently incarcerated artists, activists, and students in collaboration with artists, activists, and academics in the Twin Cities community who together explore issues of incarceration, isolation, healing, and coming home.

Representing a range of cultural, personal, and professional backgrounds and diverse forms of artistic expression, people on the “inside” partnered with people on the “outside” on the basis of creative curiosities and personal affinities. This exhibition is laid out across two galleries that evoke the “inside,” carceral (east) and “outside,” healing and community (west) experiences.

The seven-installation exhibit works to stretch the bounds of the museum as a site for community engagement and critical examination of American carceral institutions.

Teams have worked together to better understand and explore carceral isolation and trauma and the many ways it has caused generational harm in their own bodies and those of their descendants. To bring healing to the cycle of harm, they connect their families, the community, and even themselves, through this exhibition thoughtfully curated with cacophony and quiet, isolation and community, criticism and celebration.

Artists Erin Sharkey and Emily Baxter talk about Erin and Fresh’s installation, Rootbound, within SEEN @ the Weisman Art Museum.

Film by Kevin Yang, score by Shu Lor, animation by Emily Christensen. Additional assistance by Fong Lee and Louise Waakaa’igan. Portraits by Fresh. Still photography by Emily Baxter of WAAC; opening day photography by Jayme Hallbritter for the Weisman. Additional footage of Sarith Peou and Carl Flink’s cage(d) and B Batchelor and Emily Baxter’s We Can’t Hear Ourselves Sing.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Opening Day photos by Jayme Halbritter

Meet the Artists

Lennell “Fresh” Martin

Lennell “Fresh” Martin is of Cape Verdean and African American descent. He is a visual artist, graphic designer, and writer inspired by street art. As a lifelong seeker of knowledge, wisdom, and art he studies many disciplines and philosophies, earning an Associate of Arts from Inver Hills Community College, an American Bar Association Paralegal degree from North Hennepin Community College, a Bachelor of Arts in communications and liberal arts, and a graduate certificate in Social Justice Clinical Pastoral Education all while serving as the senior editor of The Prison Mirror, one of the oldest prison newspapers in the country. Martin is a leading council member on many boards, including Stillwater’s Writer’s Collective (SWC) with Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW), Restorative Justice at Stillwater, and Art From the Inside. Martin studied graphic design at Brown Institute and has since become a multi-disciplined visual artist who works with typography, photography, graphic design and many fine art mediums like graphite, charcoal, pastel, color pencil, paints, and inks.

Erin Sharkey

Erin Sharkey is a writer, artistic organizer, and cultural producer based in Minneapolis. She is the co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of the experimental arts production collective Free Black Dirt. Erin was a Bell Museum resident artist, Loft Mentor Series mentee, VONA fellow, Jerome Travel and Study grantee, MN State Arts Board grantee, MRAC Next Step Fund grantee, and Givens Foundation fellow. She is the editor of A Darker Wilderness, an anthology of Black nature writing with Milkweed Editions. Erin teaches at Metro State University and with Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.