UCSC students spend a week in Yosemite learning about conservation, art, and climate change
On August 16th, 2026, students enrolled in ENVS 171: Issues in Art and Climate at UCSC packed their camping gear and notebooks and headed to...
Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos
1817 Soquel Avenue
Santa Cruz, CA 95062
November 7, 2026 - ongoing
By appointment. Email [email protected]
Visions From Within: Women of Resilience is curated by Elizabeth Lozano and Anthony Alejandrez for the Visualizing Abolition Transition Fellowship Program and features newly commissioned paintings, drawings, and works in other mediums by people currently incarcerated in the two women’s facilities in California, Central California Facility for Women and California Institute for Women. The artists included in the show differently illuminate how they cultivate resilience—maintaining a sense of self and purpose—in circumstances designed to perpetuate harm.
“Art, poetry, gardening and other ways of tapping into my creativity was essential to my own state of mind during my own thirty years of incarceration,” explains co-curator Elizabeth Lozano. “I wanted to provide others an outlet to express their imaginations, while they continue their journeys to also get free.”
Elizabeth was a minor who was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole, but throughout her time inside, she never gave up hope. She began educating herself, started multiple self-help groups, and reached out to organizations, lawyers and lawmakers. Alongside her newfound sisters from Chowchilla’s women’s facility, she organized and challenged the system. As a result, re-sentencing started happening for many of those involved as well as for those who had been over sentenced or charged as adults while they were minors. Elizabeth was re-sentenced to 25 to life, which was later reduced to a lesser charge and sentence. After 34 years, Elizabeth was released. Elizabeth’s story has inspired Woman of Resilience. We are proud to present these artist and further educate ourselves through their art.
Artists: Kristen Umathum, Yolanda Trivizo, Nancy Ortiz, Otila Pineda, Erica Olsen, Jessica Nichols, Cristina Miramontes, Alicia Meza, Christina Marten, Belinda Magana, Destinee Marquez, Nicole Martinez, Virgina Krell, Joanna Gomez, Reyna Gomez, Melissa Garcia, Stacy Dyer, Pauline Dungan, Markeisha Dixon, Nancy Delarocha, Jalin Blocker, Amber Leal, Cheri Glover, K. Andersen.
Visions from Within is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons.
