Beth Thielen has worked as artist and educator with incarcerated and at-risk populations for over 30 years. Her work and the work of her students are represented in the Getty Research Institute, the Hammer Museum of Art, the Library of Congress Special Collections, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Houghton Library at Harvard, Yale University, the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library, as well as other important public and private collections. She is the recipient of awards from the Puffin Foundation, the Kalliopeia Foundation and is a Blue Mountain Center and Rauschenberg residency fellow.

She currently resides in Fresno, California.

Below: Artist Book for Time Slips Alzheimer's Project

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PRINTS FROM THE ABOLITION SERIES

What relationship does love have to freedom?

This is the question that formed in my consciousness one day while drawing, soon after I had started working with incarcerated adults. As a socially engaged artist, it is only through art making that my vision gains depth and communicative power. After a teaching sessions in prison or in a group home for girls, I return to the drawing board where what I have seen distills and develops into my work. The essence of my work comes from years of distillation. This is my story of our country.

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