MenuPrisoner’s Apothecarts
Small Center’s design/build team worked with the Prisoner’s Apothecary to design and fabricate “Apothecarts,” a series of mobile herbal medicine carts that make healing justice visible and accessible across the City of New Orleans. The carts are filled with plant medicine from the Prisoner’s Apothecary, and are used to catalyze public conversations at the intersection of healthcare, social justice, public art, and prison abolition.
Project Dates
August 2020–December 2020
Context
Of the 2.2 million incarcerated people in the United States, 80,000 to 100,000 are subjected to indefinite solitary confinement everyday. Prisoners are isolated for a minimum of twenty-three hours per day in a six-by-nine-foot (or smaller) concrete and steel cell. No judge or jury places an individual in solitary confinement; the decision is made solely by prison officials. The devastating, and often irreparable, effects of solitary confinement include, but are not limited to, alienation, dehumanization, despair, disorientation, paranoia, and suicidal ideation. Solitary confinement is torture and has been defined as such by the United Nations, the American Civil Liberties Union, and human rights watchdogs around the world.
The Prisoner’s Apothecary is a mobile healing unit that transforms the plants from Solitary Gardens into medicine for communities most deeply impacted by the insidious reach of mass incarceration. The apothecary produces natural medicine, tea, tinctures, steams, and salves. As the medicine is designed by folks who are incarcerated and distributed to affected communities, incarcerated individuals now have a unique opportunity to heal the communities they are often accused of harming. Mobile carts, or “apothecarts,” are a way to further mobilize and distribute the apothecary’s wares while educating the public on the issue of prison abolition.
Small Center Engagement
The Small Center team worked with the staff and partners of Solitary Gardens and Prisoner’s Apothecary to understand the uses, sites, and networks that these carts operate within. The team investigated a range of cart scales, functions, mechanical details, and materials. The final build involved two bike-pulled carts that are lightweight, strong, and transformable creating apothecarts that can survive the New Orleans street conditions and create welcoming spaces and places for conversation around healing, justice, and abolition.
In addition to designing and building in a hybrid in-person/ZOOM semester – the team also took on a series of affiliated design projects. The design team worked on a schematic design proposal for the future expansion of the Prisoner’s Apothecary into a cafe. Additional design work included a set of informational guides to be distributed from the apothecarts.
Partner Organization
Prisoner’s Apothecary is a project of artist and activist Jackie Sumell. She has spent the last 17-years working with folks serving their sentences in long-term isolation, including a collaboration with Herman Wallace that positioned her at the forefront of the campaign to end solitary confinement in the United States. She is based in New Orleans where she maintains her commitment to those directly impacted by mass incarceration through both art and advocacy.
Jackie is the lead artist, prison abolitionist, and visionary at Solitary Gardens, a park in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans that uses the tools of prison abolition, permaculture, contemplative practices, and transformative justice to facilitate exchanges between persons subjected to solitary confinement and volunteer proxies on the “outside.” In the park, planted beds the dimensions of prison cells are “gardened” by prisoners through written exchanges, growing calendars, and design templates. As the garden beds mature, the prison architecture is overpowered by plant life, proving that nature—like hope, love, and imagination—will ultimately triumph over the harm humans impose on ourselves and on the planet.
Outcome
As offshoots or satellites of the Prisoners Apothecary, the completed mobile carts are now housed at different locations (identified as part of Storia, a project in partnership with Colloqate), and maintained and stewarded by Samara Graduates, students of the partnering Samara School of Herbalism.
You can learn more about the final project here.
Collaborators
Solitary Gardens / Prisoner's Apothecarts
- jackie sumell
Resurrection After Exoneration
- Laverne Thompson
Samara School of Community Herbalism
- Jen Stovall
Team Members
Project Leads
- Emilie Taylor Welty (design lead)
- Nick Jenisch (project manager)
Students
- Elizabeth Bateman
- Jeremy Baudy
- Anna Deeg
- Claire Divito
- Rebecca Dunn
- Adrian Evans
- Danelle Martin
- Danielle Scheeringa
- Bhumika Shirole
- Zach Speroni
- James Rennert
- Dana Ridenour
Staff
- Jose Cotto
- Ann Yoachim
- Rashidah Williams
Support
- Johnson Controls, Inc.
- Tulane’s CELT program
Special Thanks
- Skatelite
- Dash Lumber
- Joly’s Metalworks
- Kirkfield’s Powdercoating
- Ultropolis Trailers
To Our Reviewers:
- Andrea Armstrong
- Edson Cabalfin
- Ana Croegaert
- Mike Dalle Molle
- Bryan Lee
- Katie Nguyen
- Doyle
- Ben Smith
