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ORAL HISTORY

jackie sumell

Solitary Gardens

In 2001, as an MFA art student at Stanford University, jackie sumell attended a talk given by Robert King, who had been recently released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola, where he spent 29 years in solitary confinement. “What can we do?” in the name of criminal justice reform, she asked him. To which he encouraged her to write the other two men in solitary confinement who, alongside himself, were known as the Angola Three: Herman Wallace and Albert King. Thus began a correspondence-based relationship that culminated in “Herman’s House” a 2004 exhibition showcasing Wallace’s dream home. At the center of Wallace’s design were gardens full of flowers. His dream garden eventually inspired sumell to launch Solitary Gardens, a conceptional project where garden beds are constructed in the dimensions, 6-foot by 9-foot, of a solitary confinement cell. Today, sumell and her team correspond with Solitary Gardeners incarcerated across the nation, who design their dream gardens. By cultivating conversations, Solitary Gardens asks us to imagine a landscape without prisons.