It Matters by Elena House-Hay
This is my second submission to the End Death by Incarceration art contest. It’s not really on topic, but I thought its message was timely and that no matter where people are, we should show each other some love. Two long-term friends of mine came up with the idea of two hands shaking, one white and the other black. One had this image painted onto her mask after I did an initial sketch of two hands. From there, my friends encouraged me to paint this painting and now I’m submitting it to share our idea with a larger audience. I hope it touches people out there like it touched us in here.
Note: The people at Cambridge Springs (one of the two women’s prison) were not allowed to color or draw on their face masks and recently told they would be penalized for drawing on them. Elena is at SCI Muncy.
Medium: Painting
Artist DOB 7/26/1995
Artist # PA 4953
[Image description: The piece depicts a handshake on and orange and yellow sunburst-like background. One hand is white, the other black. Surrounding the handshake is black cursive text that reads, “It Matters.” There are a series of small white dots increasing in size coming from the bottom left of the image, and a series of small grey dots decreasing in size coming from the top right. On the bottom right is a small black and white heart.]
