Glynn Cartledge

Ninety-five degrees in South Texas. Bobby wanting to talk, “I was incarcerated at Huntsville, a devilish brick institution. I got locked up for a b & e and put in a violent housing unit before Bush or Obama or whoever passed PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act. . . .”

An artist who spent 25+ years as a criminal defense lawyer, Glynn Cartledge showcases the precarious world of incarceration, release, recidivism, the aesthetics of guilt, and the ways in which conviction follows us home. She does this with oil portraits, multimedia collages, prison floor cloths, and recorded firsthand accounts.

Criminal justice provides raw material for Glynn’s life-long pursuit to investigate and deconstruct the utopian ideas of justice. Misinterpretation, manipulation, and cruelty. Her views of the failing justice system certainly are not original; many share these views, but as an artist and attorney, her hope is that her artwork is original because it comes from firsthand experience with the system.

Selected Awards: Atlantic Center for the Arts Fellow; Santa Fe Art Institute Fellow; Nevada Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship and Project Fellowship; Billboard Creative Billboard Award and Grant; Vermont Studio Center Emily Mason-Wolf Kahn Fellowship and Pollock-Krasner Fellowship.