This summer, JIE volunteers, working alongside Laura Betancur, an art educator at the Studio Museum, are facilitating art workshops for a group of young men on Rikers Island.  Located on 125th St., the Studio Museum at Harlem celebrates the beauty, power, and importance of Harlem, a neighborhood renowned for its rich history and contributions to Black culture. 

Each workshop opens by centering a piece from the Studio Museum’s collection. Participants study the piece to identify what stands out to them, the emotions the piece evokes, what meanings they draw from it. The group shares their observations and discusses their interpretations. For the rest of the workshop, the participants and volunteers create their own mixed-media pieces that respond to the work they have studied.

The group’s second workshop spotlighted Benny Andrews’ painting, Trees of Life (1966). The piece is notable for its vibrant colors–all of which hold a softness that invites the viewer into the painting’s pastoral scene. A valley of pastel-colored flowers wraps around two trees at the center of the painting. A feeling of comfort and contentment is interrupted by a painted hole at the center of the piece. These nuanced emotions inspired the prompt for the participants’ art-making process: How might you create a work of art that reflects what you find most nourishing in nature? 

From here, the participants and the volunteers began to make their art. The objective of the collaboration between the Studio Museum and JIE comes to the fore: these workshops are less about teaching technical art skills and instead prioritize individual exploration. As Betancur, the Studio Museum coordinator, explains, the workshop is a chance for participants to explore their self-identity through artistic expression and creation. 

Kate Scott—an art educator, doctoral student, and JIE volunteer—shared that the priority of the collaboration is to “create an environment to just dive into the art–where people feel good to be creative.” Exploration through creativity releases the participants from the restrictions of their day-to-day living. In the studio workshops, rigidity is suspended and the participants are encouraged to expand themselves as far as they desire through their art. For Betancur, when it comes to art and those who are incarcerated at Rikers Island, she’s always ready to embrace fluidity and dynamism. 

Neal Flynn, another JIE volunteer and art education doctoral student at Teachers’ College, reiterates the goal of fostering self-exploration and expression. Flynn shared that the studio workshops are about “exploring what art can be and what it means to them.” The American carceral system is geared toward dehumanizing people and labelling them as criminals–a label that may define and follow them for the rest of their lives. The studio workshops strive to provide the opposite of this experience. By providing the opportunity to explore and expand their sense of self beyond the walls that are meant to confine them, the Studio Museum and JIE hope to create an opportunity for participants to affirm their individual depth and complexity. Even if it’s just for a few hours every week, Flynn said, “We hope that the guys can feel their humanity.” 

Artistic creation and expression also have the therapeutic power of fostering community. One undeniable way this occurs in the studio workshops is through moments of witnessing—when one person engages with a work of art created by another. Scott describes this interaction: “The art happens when the viewer is interacting with it and having that conversation.” Similar to the discussions and art analysis that happen at the beginning of the workshop, at the end of the workshop, participants are invited to share what they made. In observing the art created by others in the studio workshops, participants explore each other as much as they explore themselves. Betancur points out that “empowerment [in these spaces] occurs when someone has the opportunity to appreciate what you’ve made.” Along with this empowerment, connections are forged between participants and volunteers. 

Vulnerability is a pre-condition to these shared moments of witnessing. However, in an environment such as Rikers Island, vulnerability is often seen as antithetical–a threat, even–to what individuals who are incarcerated aim for in their day-to-day in the jail: survival. The JIE volunteers have noticed that with each passing studio workshop, the participants create a space that feels comfortable and safe for self-exploration and expression. Vulnerability is welcomed and cultivated with care. 

Betancur identified the key strength of the studio workshops as collaboration. The collaboration between the JIE volunteers and the organizers at the Studio Museum brought the studio workshops to fruition, and to the group of men at Rikers. Their work and efforts are essential to the realization and enactment of this program. However, just as critical to these workshops are the connections and collaborative efforts of the participants each week.  “The people that do participate share things about themselves” says Flynn. 

To witness each other, to be vulnerable with each other, and to trust each other. Each person explores a facet of themself through creating and engaging with art, despite being in a place riddled with barriers that hinder connection. It is precisely in these workshops and through the collaboration of those involved that the healing power of art surfaces. Through moments of witnessing, vulnerability, and trust, the strength of human creativity and the desire to understand each other and ourselves emerges. 

All of this occurs within the punitive walls of Rikers Island. It is important to recognize the resilience of humanity, but perhaps it is even more important to recognize the conditions that necessitate such collaborative forms of resilience. It goes without saying, then, that art workshops and programs like it are urgently needed. 

Written by Hilary Nguyen, alumni of Columbia University (’26), JIE Volunteer, and teaching assistant for JIE’s Philosophy S26 on Rikers Island

View photos from the workshop below: