🩸💧✨
On view November 25, 2025 – January 30, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 6 | 2–4 p.m.
Losinski Gallery, 2nd Floor – Columbus Metropolitan Library, Main Branch

Artists from the Returning Artists Guild (RAG) invite you to witness the emotional and creative labor of imagining a world beyond punishment and incarceration.

Imagining Abolition: Blood, Sweat, and Tears honors the artists whose work emerges from lived experience — from the weight of time and loss to the relentless hope required to dream of freedom. Each piece is a testament to the courage it takes to rebuild, to reimagine, and to create systems rooted in care, accountability, and collective safety.

This exhibition does not offer simple answers. Instead, it opens a space for reflection, contradiction, and imagination. The artists in this show are not calling for chaos — they’re calling for transformation.

Join us as we honor their resilience and creative power.

📍 Columbus Metropolitan Library – Losinski Gallery
96 S. Grant Ave., Columbus, OH 43215
🕓 Exhibition on view during library hours

Curated by Aimee Wissman and Kamisha Thomas, Co-Founders, Returning Artists Guild

Presented in partnership with The University of Akron’s Institute for Human Science & Culture

On view now through Spring 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, December 5, 2025 | Free + open to the public
Register to attend →

Home Free: Ohio Artists Envision Prison Abolition brings together the voices of artists directly impacted by incarceration, each using their creative practice to imagine a world beyond punishment. Organized by the Returning Artists Guild (RAG), this exhibition expands our ongoing work to amplify the visions of justice-impacted creators and to challenge systems that limit their freedom, visibility, and self-expression.

Featuring painting, sculpture, quilting, photography, and multimedia works, Home Free asks:

“What does liberation look like when it’s built from the inside out?”

Each piece carries the weight of lived experience—grief, resilience, love, and radical hope—reflecting the ways art becomes both a survival tool and a roadmap toward collective healing.

About the Returning Artists Guild

The Returning Artists Guild is a peer-led collective of formerly and currently incarcerated artists using art as a pathway to reentry, healing, and systemic change. Since its founding, 100% of surveyed members have reported increased confidence, hope, and emotional expression through participation in RAG programs, with many gaining paid exhibitions, fellowships, and national press recognition.

“RAG has helped me feel welcome in a community of fellow artists who understand what I’m going through. I love RAG.” — Mark Loughney, RAG Artist

Our Collaboration with The University of Akron

This partnership with the Institute for Human Science & Culture is part of a growing network of institutions aligning with RAG’s abolitionist vision: to replace carceral systems with communities of care, creation, and belonging.

Together, we invite the public to experience not only the artwork, but the freedom dreams of those who made it possible.

Exhibition Details
🗓️ Through Spring 2026
📍 Institute for Human Science & Culture, Cummings Center for the History of Psychology, The University of Akron
💬 Reception: Friday December 5 | Artist remarks + community dialogue

This September, the Returning Artists Guild (RAG) had the honor of serving as a community partner for the Inthrive Film Festival, a national event celebrating the creativity and resilience of artists who have survived incarceration. The festival features films made by directly impacted artists from across the country—stories that challenge stereotypes, amplify truth, and show the transformative power of art behind and beyond the walls.

When Inthrive came to Columbus, Ohio, it was more than just a screening—it was a homecoming. Our co-founders, Kamisha Thomas and Aimee Wissman, were invited to speak on a powerful panel about the importance of art while incarcerated. The conversation explored how creativity sustains the human spirit in confinement, how it opens pathways to healing, and how communities like RAG continue that journey of liberation through art-making, mentorship, and mutual support after release.

RAG also served as the local community engagement partner, gathering feedback from audience members about their experience with the films and conversations. The responses reflected deep emotion—viewers spoke about being moved, challenged, and inspired by the honesty and artistry of system-impacted filmmakers.

Following the Columbus stop, Inthrive traveled to Richmond, Virginia for the official opening of its third season. Kamisha’s film, Silence is Consent: The Indictment, was among the featured works, continuing to reach new audiences and spark vital dialogue about justice, voice, and visibility.

As a peer-led organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration through art, RAG is proud to see our community represented in spaces that have traditionally excluded us. The Inthrive Film Festival is proof that when formerly incarcerated artists tell our own stories, the narrative shifts—from punishment to possibility, from silence to power.

We are deeply grateful to the Inthrive team for their vision and partnership, and to everyone who showed up to witness, listen, and share. Our artists deserve to be seen—and we’re just getting started.

🎥 Watch Kamisha and Aimee’s full panel clip below:

What happens when six men—wrongfully convicted, caged for decades, and now free—step onto the stage to tell their own stories?

They turn pain into power. They turn theater into revolution.
This is The Lynched Among Us, a searing, soul-stirring play produced by Voices of Injustice, where real-life exonerees take center stage to expose the truth of wrongful convictions, the trauma of reentry, and the fight to reclaim dignity after injustice.

This is not fiction. This is Ohio’s reality.
And now, it’s time to change the ending.

⚖️ JOIN US IN CLEVELAND on SEPTEMBER 5th for part of our 4-city Ohio crusade. From the courtroom to the stage, we’re reclaiming narrative—and demanding transformation.

But to make this tour happen, we need you.

💰 SPONSOR THE MOVEMENT:

• $1,000 → Your name in the playbill at all 4 performances
• $5,000 → Playbill + banner + VOI social media shoutout
• $10,000 → All the above + logo on our website, stage backdrops & host recognition

This isn’t just a play—it’s a campaign to end wrongful convictions in our state.
Your support funds voter education, legal literacy, and elevates the voices that were nearly erased.

👊🏾 Don’t just watch the play—stand behind it.
Sponsor, donate, or grab your ticket for Cleveland’s most urgent performance of the year.

🎟️ www.voicesofinjustice.com/donations
#TheLynchedAmongUs #VoicesOfInjustice #ClevelandJustice #EndWrongfulConvictions #OhioExonerees #ArtsForAbolition #SponsorJustice #4CityCrusade

Tickets on sale HERE

This August, 15+ artists who’ve survived incarceration are heading to Saint Simons Island, Georgia — to rest, create, and vision abolition together.

We’ve secured a beautiful home.
We’re covering flights, food, and programming.
But we need your help to close the gap.

🎯 We’re raising $5,000 to fully fund this retreat.
📅 August 4–9, 2025
📍 Saint Simons Island, GA

Help us bring healing to the shore.
Every donation supports radical joy, community building, and creative resistance.

📲 Scan to donate now

#ReturningArtistsGuild #ArtAsResistance #AbolitionRetreat #SupportSystem #MutualAidMagic #WeKeepUsFunded

That’s how much Off the Lake Productions raised for The Returning Artists Guild this year—and it’s more than just a number.

This is what it looks like when young artists use their voice, their craft, their stage—to build the world they believe in.

Thank you to the passionate student artists of Off the Lake at The Ohio State University, and especially to Sydney Webb, whose commitment to service through theatre helped forge this connection. From Machinal last summer to this season’s powerful support, your solidarity has been deeply felt.

You didn’t just donate proceeds—you opened your hearts. You listened to our stories. You saw our vision. You believed that art and abolition can walk hand in hand.

We’re honored to be your 2024 service partner. Here’s to collective liberation through creativity.

With gratitude,
—The Returning Artists Guild

#ReturningArtistsGuild #ArtForLiberation #OffTheLakeProductions #CommunityThroughTheArts #OSU #StudentArtists #Gratitude

Was On View January 23 – March 20, 2025 at the McConnell Arts Center

This exhibit, currently on tour, will make its next stop at the University of Akron.

Home Free: Ohio Artists Envision Prison Abolition explores the conditions, creative expression, and aesthetic practices of Ohio artists directly impacted by the criminal legal system and who are uniquely positioned to interrogate mass incarceration as a means to safety, justice, and rehabilitation. The Returning Artists Guild (RAG) is a network of more than thirty currently and formerly incarcerated artists in Ohio and across the United States. Its mission centers the artistic practice, processes, and nurturing of RAG artists, and develops platforms necessary to build public support for ending mass incarceration.

As part of the programming for the exhibition, we organized a community conversation,“A World Reimagined: The Work of Abolition”. If you missed it, here’s the video.

https://lemonadamedia.com/show/calldeclined/

Many wonderful people helped make and inform the Call Declined podcast. In this special bonus episode, we hear from three people who are very important in the stories of Aimee’s and Kamisha’s lives–their parents. Through our conversations across generations we hear echoes of trauma, abuse, and incarceration. And we see a system that too often declines calls for help. But we also find hope for a world where those calls are answered.  
Additional Resources:
Kamisha Thomas’s Portfolio: https://thomaskamisha.myportfolio.com/ (portfolio)
https://www.instagram.com/kdenee_614/ (Instagram)
Aimee Wissman’s work: https://aimeewissman.myportfolio.com/work (portfolio) https://www.instagram.com/aimeeinks/ (Instagram)
Pens to Pictures: https://wexarts.org/education/pens-pictures 
Call Declined is hosted by Melissa Beck and presented by the Sozosei Foundation, a philanthropic arm of Otsuka. The Foundation’s goal is to increase access to mental healthcare in order to eliminate the inappropriate use of jails and prisons for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in the United States. Learn more at http://www.SozoseiFoundation.org. 
The Sozosei Foundation extends special thanks to Aimee Wissman and Kamisha Thomas, visionary artists and co-founders of The Returning Artists Guild whose creativity, resilience, and lived experience inspire us to build a world where mental illness is not a crime. To learn more about the Guild visit http://www.thereturningartistsguild.org.