OPEN: Solitary Garden Public Sculpture and Garden Project

The Institute of the Arts is Sciences is proud to present the participatory public sculpture and garden project Solitary Garden, by jackie sumell, November 5, 2019- December 6, 2020, located at the Baskin Art Studios.
Solitary Garden features a sculpture made following the blueprint of a standard U.S. solitary confinement cell. Around the 6’ x 9’ cell grows a garden of flowers and vegetables, designed by Tim Young, currently incarcerated in San Quentin, and communicated via letters and drawings to the students and volunteers who are planting and tending the garden as his proxies. The intent of the project, as the artist and Tim Young explain, is to “imagine a landscape without prisons.”
Solitary Garden is part of Barring Freedom, a multi-faceted, 18-month project which includes exhibitions of art, events and workshops, and a multi-day symposium at UC Santa Cruz, “Visualizing Prison Abolition,” October 15-17, 2020. Barring Freedom brings together artists, activists, and scholars to imagine alternatives to our fundamentally flawed criminal justice system and to galvanize a broader public to address the broken promise of freedom and justice for all in the United States.