Virtual Artist’s Talk: Marking Time

James Yaya Hough, b.1974, currently based in Pittsburgh, Pa. is a contemporary visual artist. Through art he explores issues of Identity, Race, Violence, USA pop culture, History, and Mass Incarceration. His art is in several museums’ permanent collections, including The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Blanton Museum. His art has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and internationally. Currently, his latest public art project, “Justice Reflected” (2023-present), is on display in Battery Park in Manhattan, New York City.

Gary Harrell, artist, craftsman, and harmonica blues musician, was born in Spring Hill Louisiana and raised in Orange County California. He now resides in Sacramento California with wife and family. In 1993 Gary Harrell was incarcerated at San Quentin Prison where he served his sentence until paroled in 2020. In 1985, eight years into his sentence, he started making art. His work has since been featured at MoMa PS1, Queens, New York; Museum of the African Diaspora; University of Derby, England; Art in Action Gallery, Flagstaff, Cooper Hewitt Museum, Smithsonian, New York; 2023. Sacramento Crocker Art Museum.2023-2025, and many more.

Ashley Hunt is an artist, writer and educator whose films, photography, mappings, and collaborations with grassroots organizations have engaged struggles against the prison industrial complex for more than two decades. His forthcoming film, And Water Brings Tomorrow (fall ‘24), continues the themes of prison closures, ruins and abolitionist futures that began with Ashes Ashes (2020), his contribution to Marking Time, and Double Time (2021). A recent grantee of the Art for Justice Fund, Hunt lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.