Artist Bio

Mark A. Cádiz, also known as Rev. M. Seishin Cádiz, is a 56-year-old Puerto Rican born on a U.S. Air Force base in Texas. He is the first in his family to be born on the U.S. mainland. He is a son, a brother, an uncle, a father, a grandfather, and a Soto Zen Buddhist priest ordained in 2012 and given the name “Seishin” (pronounced Say-shin), which means “Pure Heart-Mind.” As an “inside” priest, Seishin serves the San Quentin Buddhadharma Sangha along with an “outside” priest. Seishin’s work has been exhibited at a variety of venues including SF 9th Circuit Court (2019), Liberation Prison Project Show (2021 & 2022), SF Opera, Berkeley Art Museum, and DreamCorp’s Day of Empathy and Black Future Weekend events (2022). He produced cover art for Apogee Journal (2020) and Through the Eyes of a Ski Mask 2 by Tyler Woods (2020).

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Artist Bio

Elizabeth Lozano is a Latina artist who was born in Torrance, CA, and currently resides in Chowchilla, CA. In 2012 Elizabeth received her A.A. in Behavioral and Social Science with Honors from Feather River College. Elizabeth's art has been exhibited in Central California Women's Facility's visiting store. Most recently the facility requested Elizabeth to help paint affirmations on the sidewalks to uplift the community. Her portrait of incarcerated writer Kwaneta Harris is included in the exhibition Return to Sender: Prison as Censorship, fall 2023.

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Artist Bio

Christopher “Khalifah” Christensen was born in San Francisco and raised all over Northern California and Nevada. He would go to fourteen different schools in eleven different towns/cities by the time he was a 17-year-old with a GED. Two years later he would be on his way to prison.

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Artist Bio

Chantell-Jeannette Black was born and raised in California and started drawing from a young age. She is self-taught in painting, beading, jewelry-making, scrapbooking, dance, and a plethora of other arts and crafts. She graduated Cum Laude from California State University, Sacramento in 2013 and was teaching an art class in the Central California Women’s Facility’s Art Therapy program before it shut down in 2023. She also volunteers to create holiday decorations for her housing unit and makes painted decorative pillows and blankets for other incarcerated people to purchase with canteen food. The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison Through Art and Poetry is her first curatorial project.

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Artist Bio

Corey Devon Arthur is an incarcerated writer and artist. His writing has been published in venues including the Marshall Project and Writing Class Radio. In March of 2023, he exhibited his art show, She Told Me Save The Flower, at My Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. You can check out more of his work on Instagram and Medium.

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Artist Bio

Jeff A. Isom was born in San Jose, CA, but raised in Coon Rapids, a suburb of Minneapolis, MN. Jeff is in the 20th year of a life sentence under California’s Three Strikes Law. While serving his sentence in San Quentin State Prison, he seeks to make living amends through his art. Jeff’s art has been featured at Marin Civic Center Bartolini Gallery, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals U.S. Courthouse, Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, Santa Cruz, Marin County Fair, NIAD Annex Gallery, Richmond, California, Peace Flag Project, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, San Francisco Airport Terminal, San Francisco Opera House Museum, Southern Poverty Law Center, University of Derby, England. He has contributed work to organizations such as Breast Cancer Awareness and the Southern Poverty Law Center and is looking to donate to other organizations.

In 2022, Jeffrey won the Sheridan Prize for Art, winner overall, Incarcerated Artists category, for his Endangered Wood Stork painting.

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Artist Bio

Alvin Lavon Smith Jr. is an incarcerated artist in Michigan's Department of Corrections. He was born in Laurel, Mississippi, and grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Alvin has been a long-time participant in the University of Michigan's Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) and one of only fifteen American incarcerated artists to be invited to participate in the "We Bear Exhibition" in Coventry England (February 2022). His art has been published by College Inside, a newsletter about prison education published by Open Campus, has his works cataloged in the Kruizenga Art Museum, has had illustrations featured in educational textbooks including” Incarceration and The Law: Cases and Materials, Tenth Edition”, and has had works published in books documenting struggles of making art while in prison, including “Making Art in Prison: Survival and Resistance”. In 2023 his editorial illustration “Mail Call” was published with Zócalo Public Square and several artworks were included in “Work Assignments: Contemporary Systems of Oppression,” an art installation commissioned for the Bayview Urban Arts Festival, hosted by California Lawyers for the Arts. Alvin’s solo show “Underprivileged Oasis” debuts at MUSE SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan, January 18th — February 18th, 2024.

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