Portrait Garden: Self-Renewal Through Environmental Stewardship

Portrait Garden is a socially engaged project using environmental stewardship as a tool for self-reflection with a group of eleven women incarcerated at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women. Portrait Garden included the co-creation of perennial gardens on the prison grounds and culminated in a metaphorical garden of ‘portraits’, featuring photographs of the plants we selected to represent each woman displayed with text and audio statements. The project was first displayed as a series of interactive posters (photographs, text, QR code that links to audio) in Baltimore Light Rail trains, made possible through a Rubys Media Arts Grant from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.