Janie Paul
Coalition Member
Janie Paul is the co-founder and senior curator of the Annual Exhibitions of Art by Michigan Prisoners, a project of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) at the University of Michigan. She is a visual artist and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emerita at the Stamps School of Art & Design and the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan. Beginning in 1996, she worked with founder Buzz Alexander to develop PCAP, facilitating visual art workshops in prisons; bringing students into prisons and juvenile centers to facilitate art workshops; and co-curating the Annual Exhibitions, which exhibit the work of over six hundred citizen artists living in prison each year.
Her pedagogical focus is the development of visual meaning-creation as a vehicle for individual and social change. She has recently published essays about the significance of art making for incarcerated people and has written a forthcoming book titled Art in Prison: Surviving Mass Incarceration.
For many years, Janie taught Art Workshops in Prisons, a class in which college students facilitate weekly art workshops in prisons and juvenile facilities. For this work, and her creation of Detroit Connections, which brings students to Detroit elementary schools to teach art, she has received many awards including the University of Michigan’s Diversity Award.
Janie’s painting is simultaneously influenced by her community work and serves as a source for it. Her art, which includes oil and encaustic painting, drawing and printmaking, is rooted in a long-standing connection to nature. She exhibits her work at the Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City.