Between 2016 and 2018, artists, writers, and other members of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project created a series of thematic works around long-term sentencing policies and the other long terms they produce: long-term struggles for freedom, long-term loss in communities, and long-term relationships behind the prison wall. These projects emerged out of classes and collaborative work at Stateville Prison, where people are serving extraordinarily long prison terms (whether life or 60, 70, and 80 years), often for crimes for which they would have already been released, had they been sentenced 30 years earlier, or in a different country.

Out of this project came, among other things, a portfolio of risographic prints. These prints were designed by 15 Chicago artists who responded to an essay written for a book titled The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working for Our Freedom. A copy of the portfolio with all 15 prints is up for auction. 

This work offers a powerful visual language alongside the words written by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, scholars and activists who resist the reach of the prison nation. 

Prints measure roughly 11" x 17"