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About the Artist :

What role does art play in your personal well-being?

“Art is a beautiful distraction to all things that bring us stress in life. While not all of the Rebound Institute board members are artists we wished for a place to share various things of value with the sounding world.”

Does your art have any connection to your personality?

“The Board is a mix of ages, genders, and ethnicities so our ideas of art and beauty are going to cover many bases.”

Best Selling

Incarceration to Liberation Limited Edition Beautifully Wrapped Collectable Coffee Mug

$30.00

Theme Incarceration to Liberation based on the original design of the 20ft x 30ft mural on the campus of San Francisco State University.

The design that is perfectly wrapped around the mug is an empowering expression of Project Rebound’s history that continues to inspire and educate through the concepts of the very human ability to change and manifests one’s greatest potential through higher education. Images include:

Burning Guard Tower

The guard tower leans into the composition, billowing smoke across the top of the mural. This aspect represents the abolishment of prisons.

People Bound and Encased

Beneath the smoke, in the center section of the drawing, human beings encased in and bound by their cells begin to move, break free, crawl, run and leap towards their liberation. You can see a person reaching in from the outside to help draw the person closer towards liberation through making connections on the outside.

Doing Time

In the hyper-structured world of prison, the concept of serving time in prison is referred to as “doing time”, it is represented with a large, transparent clock overlaying the prison cell in the center.

Prison Life

The regimented, dulling and exploitive nature of life in prison is shown here:  people chained together in their cellblock under the hardened watch of the guards, or in their bunks, writing letters and dreaming. Animals and griffin-like characters accompany them in the surreal dream world, where dollar bills drape their quarters, referring to the prison industrial complex, where inmates produce profits for a private economy.

Connections outside

We see an individual in his cell, writing and then folding a letter into an origami bird, which flies out of the cell to transform into a real bird, and then into a multitude of birds taking flight.

The Cave

Here, we see a visual representation of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where figures debate about possible realities and forms of liberation.

Social Imprisonment

To the right of the cave, we see another representation of social imprisonment, where under the mesmerizing effects of a huge screen people are forced to live in highly militarized communities, cross dangerous borders or work in alienating jobs in order to survive.

Breaking Free

Around the figure reaching into those who are confined, are a chain of doves that eventually reach a human figure who has wings, to symbolize the gaining of freedom and spreading of one’s wings. Out  of the multitudes of birds emerge the figures of graduates celebrating appear, symbolizing the success of students who go through rebound.

The Tenacity of a Rose

Despite the darkness they are emerging from, figures in the cave ascend the stairs into the light. We also see other figures surrounding a campfire, and gesture towards a giant rosebush that springs from the underground decay.

The Phoenix

A phoenix emerges directly behind the different leaders of the cause. This phoenix symbolizes rebirth, and opportunity for folks to start anew after emerging from the constraints of incarceration.

Leaders of the cause

1. Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander is a civil rights advocate and author. Her work, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, highlights the systematic nature of mass incarceration, and discusses the direct implications of mass incarceration as a racialized system.

Dr. John Irwin

Dr. John Irwin (1929-2010) was a sociologist and criminologist, who founded Project Rebound. He not only supported incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people through his academic works, but through his friendship and guidance.

C. Jason Bell with a Project Rebound Graduate

Jason Bell is an integral leader in Project Rebound. A Rebound Graduate, he went on to become the Director of Project Rebound, and ultimately started Rebound Expanded, which brings Project Rebound to other CSU campuses.

Assata Shakur

Assate Shakur is a Black American political prisoner, currently in exile in Cuba. She was a member of the Black Liberation Army, and was unjustly incarcerated in 1979. She escaped prison in 1984, and continues to be a symbol of liberation and the fight against a corrupt justice system.

Leonard Peltier with Yazmin Madrid

Leonard Peltier is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and political prisoner. He was unjustly incarcerated after the 1975 Pine Ridge Shoot-out initiated by FBI Agents. Peltier is a member of the American Indian Movement, and remains a symbol of US suppression of Native rights, and the justice system as a tool to silence movements.

Yazmin Madrid was the student who initiated the Project Rebound Mural project with her class, and she and her classmates designed and created the mural.

Rhodessa Jones

Rhodessa Jones is an actress, writer, and Director of the MEDEA Project. The MEDEA Project is a theater for incarcerated women, and HIV circle. Jones founded the MEDEA Project to explore how arts could reduce recidivism rates among women.

Exiting the pipeline rooted

The bottom of the image is frame by a line of pipes that eventually morphs into roots of a tree. This is to represent the ways in which Project Rebound helps folks emerge from the prison pipeline rooted and supported in their journey towards success.

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