jackie sumell

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in June 2023.

GM: What was your path to becoming an artist?

js: My path to becoming an artist was similar to my path towards abolition, which was circuitous and unexpected. I studied sports medicine and physical therapy in undergrad; my mom was a nurse and my dad was a prosthetist, so they were both in healthcare and I figured that that was my direction too But I was a weird, dyslexic kid who would draw a lot and was very creative in many ways. I ended up as an artist after graduating from the College of Charleston and on my way to law school. I was experimenting with all these different programs, and I had an art teacher, Kathleen Anderson, who stepped in. She had heard that I was studying for the LSAT and I said that I thought I would be a good lawyer because “I’m pretty smart and a good debater, and there is a lot of injustice and wrongdoing.” I was super ignorant of what the law does, and she said, “I think you’re doing it because you want to be important and [this is] the wrong crowd to be important amongst.” She thought I should be an artist and recommended I get an MFA, as she had seen me teaching younger students and said that the terminal degree would allow me to teach at the collegiate level. We spent the next eight months working on a portfolio, which then took me to the on-ramp of becoming an artist.

GM: There are many parents that pressure their kids to have those 3-4 standard career paths – doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc. – when the reality is, there’s importance in everything.

js: When I told my mom that I was going to go to get an MFA, she was really disappointed because she wanted me to be a pilot, or a doctor She also wanted me to be married and have kids by the time I was 26 As soon as I got into Stanford, she was said, “I always knew you were going to be an artist!” (Laughs) It’s funny. But I will say that I did not believe in the value of art for a very long time, and found it to be superfluous – a practice of the privileged, something that wasn’t available to everybody, and therefore, in my mind, was wrong. As I grew into being the artist that I am becoming today – because it’s an infinite process – I started to realize that it’s a superpower. Being an artist is really incredibly brave, especially with projects like Herman’s House and Solitary Gardens. The reason that art is not funded and is the first programming to be cut from curricula is because of how powerful artists are. That is the position that I’m in now, 25 years later.

GM: A big emphasis on your practice is working with incarcerated individuals, such as the two decades you spent working with the Angola 3 – Robert King, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox. What was your experience working with them?

js: All of my personal and political orientation is because of the Angola 3, Herman and Albert in particular. I live in Louisiana because of those men, and under no uncertain terms it was their great tutelage, patience, love, and permission that has really informed and made possible the work that I do today. I wouldn’t do this work if there wasn’t consent Now that Herman and Albert have joined the ancestors, this work is a way for me to thank them It’s not like I can just call them up anymore, or write them a letter. (Continued)

You’re asking what that was like, and it was really hard. It’s not easy going into prison, particularly Angola, twice a month, or living in Louisiana. The trajectory of what my MFA program wanted me to do is very different than where I landed, which was this space of incredible meaning and purpose, and there’s no tradeoff for that There’s no show, fellowship, or art award that I would ever trade for the love that I received from those men. This work isn’t just an expression of gratitude. I was advocating for abolition while I was in San Francisco, working and writing. It was 2005, Hurricane Katrina had just happened, social media was in its nascent stages, and one of my elders, Malik Rahim, put out this call and said, “You all call yourself activists, you better act!” (Laughs) And so I came to New Orleans for two weeks with a group of folks that I knew from organizing around the Angola 3, and seventeen years later, I’m still here.

GM: How did this work evolve into the Solitary Gardens project?

js: I spent twelve years collaborating with Herman – mostly through writing, visits to the prison, phone calls – and designing his dream home. When Herman joined the ancestors, here I was in New Orleans, working on this project called The House That Herman Built. I was really unsure of what my next move was going to be. At that point, I had thousands of letters from Herman. I went back, read them, and realized how much Herman talked about plants and gardens [Herman spent] forty one years in concrete and steel I knew there was some way to uphold the life and legacy of that man through gardening, but I wasn’t a grower – I didn’t even like gardening at the time! (Laughs) It’s funny to think about it now because the relationship to the beloved natural world and gardening is such a big chunk of my life. Herman was in his twenty-ninth year of solitary confinement when I asked what house he dreamed of. He said that he could clearly see the gardens, filled with roses, and wished for guests to be able to smile and walk through gardens all year around It was the first thing he asked for, and I find that really remarkable and revolutionary – that this man that was condemned to concrete and steel found so much of his liberation in gardens. I visited my friend, Leo Gorman, who started this project called Grow Dat, and at the time it was basically a grassy field with a couple of raised beds. I was struck by the size of the garden bed, realizing that it was around the same size as Herman’s cell And then it was download after download of thinking about how to illustrate the inhumanity of solitary confinement and uphold the life and legacy of such a remarkable man, but not just leave things there. [I wanted to] be able to affect change in real time and do this through an abolitionist lens and lifestyle – and so that was the genesis of Solitary Gardens.

GM: You have had a long-standing collaboration with MoMA PS1, which resulted in Growing Abolition: jackie sumell and the Lower Eastside Girls Club (April – October 2022), as part of PS1’s Courtyard and the Life Between Buildings exhibition, and Freedom to Grow: The Lower Eastside Girls Club & jackie sumell (November 2022 – April 2023). What did both of these projects mean to you?

js: I was invited to speak on a panel at PS1 for the Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration exhibition, and I asked if I could speak with my friend, Mariame Kaba, about abolition. They agreed, so Mariame and I spoke to this open audience about the value of abolition, what it means to be an abolitionist, and how the plants actually teach us about abolition. (Continued)