Art Installations

Mary DeWitt: Life Sentences: Portraits of Women Serving Life Without Parole

Ms DeWitt has painted the faces of women serving life sentences on large sheets of glass, and hung them beneath the skylights in each cell. The effect is similar to the soft glowing colors in stained glass windows. Each portrait is accompanied by the subject’s voice, quietly explaining the nature of her crime and details of her life in prison without parole.

Ms DeWitt’s Artist Statement opens the exhibition:

From May to November, in the cells of this block, I will exhibit the portraits and the voices of women in Pennsylvania who are currently serving life sentences with no parole.

Over nearly a decade I have observed the lives of these women, repeatedly painting their face and recording their intimate thoughts. My experience has revealed people who, because of the heaviness of their remorse, seem to realize an elevated capacity for empathy and for giving of themselves.

I have painted each woman as an icon, a presentation befitting the woman and the site. Eastern State Penitentiary was conceived to provide prisoners the opportunity for penitence through isolation and bibliotherapy. Because of the degree of solitary confinement inflicted upon prisoners, many find this approach to be inhumane, bit its proponents truly believed in the potential from prisoners repentance.

Ms DeWitt has taught art classes in the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, and is the former Director of the Arts and Humanities Program at the Pennsylvania Prison Society. Former exhibitions include I Face Myself, I Face You in the Philadelphia City Hall Courtyard, and Women and Children First: Emergency Art from Behind Bars at the Ester Klein Gallery in Philadelphia. Ms DeWitt’s portraits of life-sentenced women have been seen throughout the area for the last ten years.