Solitary Garden

Jackie Sumell, Artist 

Perched on a slope at UC Santa Cruz overlooking Monterey Bay, Solitary Garden (2019) is a sculpture made following the blueprint of a standard U.S. solitary confinement cell. Around this small prison cell is 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. As flowers and vegetables grow up around the cell, the garden transforms the image of confinement into a space of nourishment and hope.

The process of collaboratively nurturing the garden is an opportunity for participants to, as sumell describes, “imagine a landscape without prisons.”

“While the United Nations has condemned the practice of solitary confinement as torture,” the artist explains, “there are an estimated 61,000 people held in isolation for 22-24 hours each day in U.S. prisons. Solitary Garden is a call to end this appalling practice.”

Solitary Garden is part of Barring Freedom, a multi-faceted, 18-month project developed by UCSC Institute of Arts and Sciences which includes exhibitions of art, events and workshops, and an online event series on the theme of Visualizing Abolition October 20, 2020- May 11, 2021.