Life Means Life: Angola Prison Hospice
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
6–8 p.m.
520 Royal Street
“Life Means Life: Angola Prison Hospice” will explore an essential question: is everyone in prison dangerous? Close to 80 percent of men incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary will die behind bars. In 1998, isolation cells were repurposed as hospice rooms and volunteers from the prison population were trained to provide comfort, care, and last requests to the patients. To raise money for the program, volunteers began sewing and selling quilts. These quilts—and the artists who create them—are the embodiment of creativity, care, and hope.
In this program, artists Steven Garner and Gary Tyler, formerly incarcerated volunteers in the Angola hospice, will share their quilt work and stories with the audience. Photographer Lori Waselchuk will describe her powerful series, Grace Before Dying, which documents the hospice program and explores how the men assert and affirm their humanity and creativity in this environment. Activist Anthony Hingle Jr. will explain how his passion to help others grew while working and caring for men in the infirmary wards and medical dormitories while in Angola. The program will be moderated by Norris Henderson, founder and executive director of Voice of the Experienced (VOTE).
“Life Means Life: Angola Prison Hospice” is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration, on view at 520 Royal Street through January 2025.
At 5 p.m. Captive State will be open to program attendees for a private viewing with curators. All registered attendees are encouraged to arrive early to view the exhibition. The Shop at the Collection will also be open from 5–6 p.m.
At 6 p.m. the panel discussion will begin with a light reception immediately following.
Speakers
Steven Garner
Steven Garner was born in New Orleans. He is a hospice and prison reform consultant as well as a master quilter. Incarcerated at a young age, Garner served 31 years at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where he served as president of the hospice volunteer program for more than 24 years. He has made over 1,000 quilts to support the Angola end-of-life care program, helping men depart this earth with compassion, dignity, and respect. Garner’s work was featured by Oprah in the Netflix documentary Serving Life and has appeared in several other nationally renowned projects. He was released from prison in January 2022 and resides with family in Colorado Springs. His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Gary Tyler
Gary Tyler is a fiber artist living and working in California. At the age of 16, he was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. Though his case was the subject of international outcry, Tyler spent 42 years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola before being released. For more than 40 years, he has worked at the intersection of art and social justice, teaching himself how to quilt to support the Angola prison hospice program, where he was a volunteer. Tyler was the president of the Angola prison drama program for three decades, using his position to promote a culture of community, civic responsibility, and optimism. He is a 2019 and 2020 Art Matters award winner, and his work is in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Lori Waselchuck
Lori Waselchuk is an award-winning Philadelphia-based visual artist and activist whose work asks questions about our lived experiences and the systems we inhabit, contest, and construct. She is a documentary photographer whose works have appeared in national and international exhibitions and publications. Waselchuk also curates and coordinates arts-centered projects that prioritize creative community engagement and social justice. Grace Before Dying, currently on view in the Tricentennial Wing at the Historic New Orleans Collection, is a photographic exploration of the hospice program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Anthony Hingle Jr.
Anthony Hingle Jr. was born in New Orleans and has a deep passion for helping others. In 2021, after being incarcerated for 32 years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Hingle’s conviction was amended, and he was released. While in Angola, he grew, matured, and furthered his education by completing college courses. Hingle also developed two programs at Angola: the Annual Patient Indoor Recreation Challenge and The Walk-Through: The Reality of a Life Sentence. Now that he’s home in New Orleans, Hingle wants to be a voice for incarcerated people. He is an ambassador for the Visiting Room Project and sits on the advisory board for the Historic New Orleans Collection’s current exhibition Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration. Currently on staff at Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), Hingle is focused on serving as a liaison between the incarcerated community and the free world.
Norris Henderson (moderator)
Norris Henderson is the founder and executive director of Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) and its sister organization, Voters Organized to Educate. Norris is a former OSI Soros Justice Fellow and has had tremendous success impacting public policy and discourse about reentry, police accountability, public defense for poor and indigent people, and reforming the notorious Orleans Parish Prison (OPP)—also known as the Orleans Justice Center (OJC). In 2018, Norris served as the statewide campaign director for the Unanimous Jury Coalition, a ballot campaign that ended non-unanimous juries—and thus Jim Crow’s last stand—in Louisiana.
Wrongfully incarcerated for 27 years, Norris shares firsthand experience of the racism and brutality of the criminal justice system with communities of color across Louisiana. He was a jailhouse lawyer, a co-founder of the Angola Special Civics Project, and a trailblazer for freeing other wrongfully convicted people prior to the inception of the Innocence Project. While incarcerated, Norris co-founded a hospice program and also drafted a successful parole reform law for lifers.
Norris regularly speaks publicly in support of underprivileged communities in New Orleans and acts as a general liaison to other community organizations in the city. Since his release in 2003 Norris has applied his 27 years of self-taught legal expertise and community organizing skills to many leadership positions, including co-director of Safe Streets/Strong Communities and community outreach coordinator of the Louisiana Justice Coalition. Norris serves on the board of directors for many organizations, including Common Justice, and is a co-founder and steering committee member of the Formerly Incarcerated Convicted People and Families Movement. Norris has also received numerous awards in the civil rights community.