Gary Tyler: Rebirth features quilts that explore themes of hope, resilience, and mass incarceration. Tyler is a fiber artist and activist whose quilted and appliquéd works explore his experiences as an inmate in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, for a crime he was falsely convicted as a teenager, and where he remained — with time served on death row — for over four decades. After a decade of fear and depression, he turned to quilt-making and theater as a respite from his situation, as a form of self-expression, and as a way to uplift his fellow inmates.

His quilt-making practice supported the Angola Prison Hospice program, a radical program that cares for dying inmates. His Angola Prison drama program provided a sense of community and fellowship among inmates, and provided those who entered into the system without literacy the chance to learn to read and write. His artistic practice provided structure, expectations, and responsibility, and facilitated a creative outlet to process the trauma incurred by incarceration.

“Doing textile work gives me an opportunity to be able to utilize fabric in a most creative way that I never thought really existed. It’s something that I feel that’s empowering. It tends to really manifest who I am as an individual.” –Gary Tyler