Salons at Stowe: Two Artists on the Creative Endeavor and Positive Social Change

Salons at Stowe

Two Artists on the Creative Endeavor and Positive Social Change

February 20, 2022

In 2020 and 2021, The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center commissioned original works of art by multidisciplinary artist jackie sumell, director of Solitary Gardens (Louisiana), and Judy Dworin of the Judy Dworin Performance Project (Connecticut), as a means of using creative expression to explore historical themes and social justice issues today. Both sumell’s Solitary Garden installation and Dworin’s collaborative dance and spoken-word performance, Emergence, address issues relating to incarceration and bridge community-based action with creative impulse and practice.

Join sumell and Dworin in a salon conversation about the power of art to create change and the echoes of the history and legacy of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the work of contemporary activist-artists. The discussion will be moderated by Amy Hufnagel, the Stowe Center’s Director of Programs and Visitor Experience, who commissioned both artistic works. This program is part of a suite of online programs for the release of the film versions of Emergence, which uses sumell’s solitary garden installation as a central element of the staging. Registration for the film premier is open.

jackie sumell has spent the last two decades working directly with incarcerated folx, most notably, her elders Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, and she has received multiple residencies and fellowships, including, but not limited to, an A Blade of Grass Fellowship, Creative Capital, Art 4 Justice, Robert Rauschenberg Artist-as-Activist Fellowship, Soros Justice Fellowship, Eyebeam Project Fellowship and a Schloss Solitude Residency Fellowship. She is based in New Orleans, Louisiana where she continues to work on Herman’s House, Solitary Gardens, The Prisoner’s Apothecary PLUS and several other community-generated, advocacy based projects.

Judy Dworin is a dance/theater artist and educator committed to inspiring social action through her work with the Judy Dworin Performance Project (JDPP), which she founded in 1989. JDPP’s performance residency at York Correctional Institution for women that began in 2005 has catalyzed the development of a comprehensive arts residency program reaching out to York CI mothers and Cybulski CI fathers and their children (Moms & Kids and Dads & Kids); a multi-arts residency for young women ages 18 to 25 housed in the W.O.R.T.H unit at York CI; an in-school program for Greater Hartford children and youth with parents in prison; several programs for women and men returning home from prison; and most recently a multi-arts program for young men in juvenile detention centers in Hartford and Bridgeport, CT. Judy is a Professor Emerita in Theater and Dance at Trinity College where she recently received an honorary doctoral degree of Fine Arts.

Advance registration is required.

Thank you to the George A. & Grace L. Long Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Co-Trustee, for helping to make this program possible.

Location Virtual

Doors Open 7:00 PM

Program 7:00-8:30 PM

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2023

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Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.