‘Art is my escape’: Paintings, drawings, a Popsicle stick sculpture and other intricate work make up the 2026 Art from the Inside Out exhibition, debuting Friday

“My biggest inspiration for my artwork is God, injustice and purpose,” said Ivan Florez, an incarcerated artist with work featured in the fourth annual “Art From the Inside Out” exhibition.

Coordinated by Inside Out Reentry Community, the exhibition is currently on display in Iowa City through Feb. 14 at the Public Space One Close House. A public reception will take place on Friday, Feb. 6 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Many of the works have accompanying artist statements with numbers for Corrlinks, a messaging service that gives people the ability to keep in touch with incarcerated loved ones via video sessions, email, text and photo sharing. I reached out to Florez, and we talked on the phone about his work.

“If we take a look around the world today, you can see for yourself the injustice pouring out of the pores of the world,” he said.

When Florez was first incarcerated, he described his point of view as “thinking too small.” He was following others in a world where too many people use others for their own gain, a world where his best interests were never a factor of the group, Florez explained. Through some soul searching and the help of Inside Out Reentry Community, he’s gained a new perspective. 

“At the end of the day, I want to do something that means something,” Florez said. “I want to leave this world knowing that I made a difference in somebody’s life. I am trying to do that through my artwork, through my writings, poetry, through music, through every way that I can just leave that mark on this world.”

Florez isn’t alone; the entire Art From the Inside Out exhibit has been curated by people currently or formerly incarcerated. As a reentry organization, Inside Out Reentry’s goal is to support people returning from incarceration. Since they’ve started Art From the Inside, their exhibits have only gotten larger over the last four years. 

“We get all this beautiful art all the time from folks that we’re working with,” said Michelle Heinz, one of Inside Out Reentry community’s organizers for the exhibit. “People will send us cards or share it, and we thought, why don’t we try to do another one of these shows?”

The org looks for opportunities to provide incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people healthy coping mechanisms and outlets for their energy. 

“The creation of art is a really healing act,” Heinz said. “Art allows us to reduce our stress or anxiety. It allows us to express our emotions, our feelings. It’s fun. It’s also uplifting.”

The exhibit also gives its contributors something to look forward to, Heinz said. Some artists started working on their pieces as early as nine months ago.

“That’s, I think, a really neat part about doing this show, too, is when we’ve had artists that have come back over the years, we see how their arts, the style may be changing, or they’re picking up a new media,” Heinz said. “That’s kind of cool for us on this end to be able to see their progression as an artist.”

The artists in the exhibition draw from all kinds of aesthetic influences: street art, tattoo flash, abstract paintings, carpentry, collage, pro wrestling, comic books, anime. Florez said he takes inspiration from Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco, citing them as some of his favorite artists. They’re all famous Mexican painters, some of whom were participants in the Mexican revolution, taking it upon themselves to take down tyrants through their art.

“Diego Rivera, in particular, was able to paint all over the world, including the U.S.,” Florez said. “He would always sneak in certain revolutionary figures within his paintings that wasn’t always to the liking of the people that hired him to paint those projects. I’m also really inspired that no matter what, they stuck to what they believed in and did something with it.”

Upcoming event:

Art from the Inside Out Reception