Friday, May 5, 5:30 - 7:30 pm: Reception for the 2006 Artists (FREE)

Eastern State Penitentiary hosts a changing series on artist installations as part of the historic site's exhibits on history and criminal justice. In 2006 there will be ten installations on view during all public hours. Join the penetentiary for First Friday and a chance to meet the artists and see the new work! Light refreshments will be served.

Linda Brenner: Ghost Cats
Thirty-nine sculptures represent the colony of cats that took up residence in the prison grounds after the penitentiary closed in 1971.

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: Pandemonium
Using the existing elements in the prison cells, Cardiff and Miller will produce a percussive site work that is rhythmic and musical at some points and at other times pure sound as if a multitude of people or ghosts have inhabited the hall.

Nick Cassway: Portraits of Inmates in the Death Row Population Sentenced as Juveniles
Forty-one portraits depicting approximately half of the juveniles on death row today are stenciled onto 24" x 36" steel plates. The portraits line the 30 foot high perimeter wall outside of Cellblock 15, Eastern State’s "Death Row."

Dayton Castleman: The End of the Tunnel
Hundreds of feet of two-inch steel pipe trace paths in and around Eastern State's original seven cellblocks like giant red lines representing imagined escape routes.

William Cromar: GTMO
A materially and dimensionally accurate representation of one cell from the now abandoned Camp X-Ray at GTMO (military abbreviation for the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) is inserted inside of a now-abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary cell.

Michael Grothusen: Midway of Another Day
This sculpture functions as a combination clock, calendar and addresses the slow, almost still, passing of time which was experienced by many inmates.

Alexa Hoyer: I always wanted to go to Paris, France
Using three televisions to screen excerpts from over seven decades of prison film history, this installation challenges visitors to re-examine their notion of prison life.

Ann Messner: penitentiary
An offset 28 page tabloid of full-page black and white photographs is distributed free of charge through a newspaper vending machine in Cell Block 10. The photographs are images taken within the complex that visualize a dual reality of the site: that it was once a penitentiary where people were imprisoned, that it is now a historical site where visitors are free to come and go.

Matthew and Jonathan Stemler: Juxtaposition
This installation gives new life to fallen material by dividing the cell horizontally with suspended plaster pieces. It provides an area in which to consider the building’s past and present experience in light of material position.

Judy Taylor: my glass house
Black and white, glass-plate photographs showing specimens of the natural habitat found within Eastern State's walls replace missing windowpanes in the penitentiary greenhouse.