Vitalis Im is an anthropologist, psychotherapist, and Assistant Professor of Health and Human Services at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. Since 2019, he has been involved with the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), where he facilitates creative writing, theater, and music workshops in Michigan prisons. His engagement with PCAP also extends to its Annual Exhibition of Artists in Michigan Prisons, one of the largest exhibitions in the world dedicated to artwork created by incarcerated artists. He has been a part of the exhibition’s curatorial team since 2022.
As a part of his many hats, Vitalis moonlights as an opera singer. He is working toward his goals of becoming an amateur boxer and improviser—experiences he is doubtful he will survive fully intact.
Vitalis is the director and chief curator of Postmarked From the Inside.
Martín Vargas is an art curator with numerous exhibitions and awards. He paints murals, portraits, wildlife, and signature “Pudgies” embodying universal life experiences that connect to crisis, change, and contemplation. In 2017, a maze of endless, twisting staircases, and pitfalls depicting his life’s journey was presented to United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor by the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project.
“I’m just a normal person on this side of that maze,” says Martín. “Fear, anger, depression, and desperation are normal in abnormal environments, but healing is very possible with art.”
In Painting His Way Home, a self portrait depicting his past, present, and future, Martín is a Pudgie painting a hole on a prison cell wall; outside is his home, and the landscape of the normalcy he seeks. This image is powerfully affecting—as is he. Martín speaks with generosity and wisdom about the trials of life and the necessity of knowing who you are and creating your own future.
Emily Chase is an artist, educator and therapist with over 18 years of experience witnessing the life-changing power of the arts for individuals and communities. Throughout her career, she has focused on increasing access to the arts for those who have been historically denied, and for those whose access to creative expression holds urgent potential for themselves and society.
Emily began her career as a special education teacher of art and other subjects to students with emotional impairments, autism, and learning disabilities in New York City, where she realized the inextricable link between artistic creation and a human’s sense of self, both for the students and for herself. She has worked to leverage the potential of artistic expression to create and strengthen relationships between individuals and across communities since that time.
Emily’s creative practice involves visually exploring multilayered memories through the physical and cognitive experiences of mixed media manipulation and visual journaling during the few minutes of freedom that exist in between being a mother, spouse, therapist, and human who needs sleep. Some day she would like to garden.
Brianne Sheltraw is a student at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. She is majoring in Health and Human Services. She is a contributing artist and curator with Postmarked From the Inside.
Suzy Moffat is a graduate of the Residential College at the University of Michigan. Her senior thesis explored the abolitionist potentialities of artmaking practices in prison. She has been a part of the curatorial team of the Annual Exhibition of Artists in Michigan Prisons since 2022. She is a curator with Postmarked From the Inside.