Image Credit: (L) Terri Voss, Self-Portrait, 2019, Case documents and acrylic on canvas panel. (R) Raymond Towler, Witch Doctor, 2000, Graphite drawing print
Home Free: Ohio Artists Envision Prison Abolition
Opens August 19, 2025.
Lynn Rodeman Metzger Galleries
Ohio has 27 state prisons. Almost 1 in 11 Ohioans, nearly 1 million people, have a felony conviction and as many as 1 in 3 have a criminal record of some sort.*
Home Free: Ohio Artists Envision Prison Abolition features works by currently or formerly incarcerated artists, each with their own artistic voice and lived experience. Some offer critique and challenge us to confront our own limited narratives, while others depict the visual language of the carceral landscape. Many of the artists in the show have creative practices built around the function and passing of time in prison, and their media and process choices reflect their relationship with time and carceral materials. Other artists chose to investigate personal resilience, identity, and the power of our community to thrive despite the lasting impacts of incarceration.
Ohio is ready for healing, and this group of artists are dedicated to the work of creating a true homecoming: the end of the carceral state and a safe, free future for everyone.
Home Free is a touring exhibit presented by the Returning Artists Guild, an abolitionist guild of directly impacted practicing artists across Ohio, and beyond.
* according to Policy Matters Ohio, a Cleveland-based research group
About the Returning Artists Guild 
The Returning Artists Guild (RAG) was formally co-founded by Aimee Wissman and Kamisha Thomas in 2018, after their respective releases. They wanted to continue the therapeutic, creative community that they found “inside.” Both are multidisciplinary, social practice artists and single mothers, who believe that their artistic talents and energy are best spent building a platform for artists like themselves and investing in a free future for everyone. The work that led to the RAG began inside Dayton Correctional Institution in 2015, when Aimee, Kamisha, and other artists, developed an art therapy program and discovered the transformative power of the arts to heal and give voice to women who were locked in mental and emotional cages long before their physical incarceration. Through RAG artists’ performances, artworks, and storytelling, these exhibitions and events have helped audiences gain a better understanding of the prison industrial complex, its direct impact on so many people, and the distinction between prison abolition and prison reform movements.
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