Day 34 – Making art with the women at the Suffolk County House of Correction

Day 34 - Every other Monday I go to the Suffolk County House of Correction for an arts and spirituality group.  I coordinate the group of volunteers with a colleague at Lesley University, E. Kellogg.  We also have an intern from Lesley University whose primary internship responsibility is with Emmanuel Church in Boston. 

 

The Arts and Spirituality group was begun by Pamela Werntz, an Episcopal priest from Emmanuel Church. The program began in the fall of 1998 and involves a group of volunteers from various faith-based organizations and incarcerated and detained women. Pam ran the group for many years and then asked a group of us at Lesley whether we would be willing to take on the volunteer coordination.  We have been doing so for about five years, but Pam continues to volunteer once a month, and many of the volunteers have been attending the group either bi-weekly or monthly for many years.

 

The group seems to provide an important sense of community for the women and an opportunity for them to make greeting cards to send to their loved ones.  It’s a time of sharing, artmaking, community support, and conversation.  The group begins and ends with a short reflection/prayer, and includes an opportunity for each person to be recognized by the group, and for us to hold in our hearts the names of the people for whom the cards are made of who are on our minds as we make art.

 

There has never been a week in which I have attended the group when I didn’t leave moved in some way by the care and thoughtfulness of someone in the group.  And I really enjoy making cards and being creative as well. During the beginning of the pandemic when we (volunteers) were unable to go to the jail, we came up with the idea of making cards to send to the women to remind them that we were thinking of them.  The photo above is of some of the cards that were made by the volunteers.