This week on Open Studio with Jared Bowen, Bowen sits down with artist Titus Kaphar to talk through his exhibit at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum titled "The Jerome Project." Using gold and tar, Kaphar tells the story of incarcerated men. When Kaphar was googling his own father, he found his mug shot—and the mug shots of 97 other Black men who shared his father's name. By recreating portraits of these incarcerated men, using varying levels of tar to obscure their faces to correlate with the length of their sentences, Kaphar grapples with both his own personal history and how mass incarceration affects society.
From there, we meet mixed-media artist Rose B. Simpson. Her work of clay sculptures is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Rose B. Simpson talks about her indigenous identity, how the creative process is a healing one for her, and why she sees her sculptures as "beings" rather than as "objects." She also talks about how beocoming a mother has changed the way she creates, as it brings more urgency and responsilbity to her work.
Bowen wraps up the show with muralist Dathan Kane. Though he uses only black and white, that is far from how he sees the world. Kane says he uses these bold colors as a way to challenge people who live by societal conventions.
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