Explore the creative vision of 24 artists at SPARK: New Light, presented by UMBC, Towson University, and PNC Bank, August 13 through September 25 at The Peale. SPARK: New Light will ignite your imagination. UMBC artists featured in this fifth annual family-friendly SPARK exhibition include Lynn Cazabon, Irene Chan, Adam Droneberg, Fahmida Hossain, Ahlam Khamis, Kathy Marmor (with Penny Rheingans), Lisa Moren (with Tsvetan Bachvaroff, Dan Deacon, and Woody Lissauer), Timothy Nohe, Corrie Francis Parks, Chris Peregoy, Foster Reynolds-Santiago. Special events will feature Kelley Bell, the UMBC Percussion Ensemble, and the Umbilicus ensemble.

Most prisons and jails across the United States do not allow prisoners to have access to cameras. At a moment when an estimated 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S., 3.8 million people are on probation, and 870,000 former prisoners are on parole, how can images tell the story of mass incarceration when the imprisoned don’t have control over their own representation? This exhibition addresses the unique role photography plays in creating a visual record of this national crisis, despite the increasing difficulty of gaining access inside prisons.

In conjunction with the exhibition Prison Nation, the Library Gallery presents Portrait Garden, a display of works by Lynn Cazabon, professor of visual arts and director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity (CIRCA), in the Library Rotunda. Portrait Garden is a metaphorical garden of ‘portraits’ of eleven women incarcerated at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, a multilevel security prison.