By Kelly MacConomy
ALEXANDRIA,VA – Reston artist and educator Kelli Schollard-Sincock is more than creatively inspired. She’s compassionately inspired. Two years ago, Kelli began Inspiration Matterz, a program that brings art instruction to the incarcerated and those transitioning while in halfway housing.
Five years ago, Kelli attended a lecture at the Lorton Workhouse Art Center with a friend. Former corrections officers presented attendees with a collection of artwork that detainees at the jail had bartered for commissary credit privileges. Kelli was, she says, “blown away by the quality of the artwork.” And Kelli’s friend said, “Kelli! You should do this. Teach art in jails!” Thus the seed was planted to found a nonprofit that brings therapeutic art instruction to the less fortunate.
It took some years to kick-start Inspiration Matterz. Kelli was working on her second fine arts degree in printmaking from George Mason University, having already earned one in interdisciplinary media with an emphasis on metalsmithing and sculpture from the University of Washington. With the second degree achieved, Kelli contacted the Alexandria Detention Center. Sheriff Dana Lawhorne, well known for enhancing opportunities for those in incarceration, was more than receptive to the idea.
With Sheriff Lawhorne’s enthusiastic come-on-over approval, Kelli was given safety training and ushered to a classroom to use as a studio. Classes are capped at 20 men, with one guard outside – not inside – the room. Kelli, a petite, attractive woman, was left to conduct art lessons with all manner of tools available, potentially to be fashioned into weapons. Undaunted by sharpened pencils and an incredulous chorus of, “We can’t draw!”, Kelli didn’t accept “can’t” as an excuse to fail.
Inspiration Matterz has proved to be so popular and successful that there’s a waiting list for Kelli’s art class. Students unable to take the class with certain other inmates or those low on the waiting list receive instruction from Inspiration Matterz alumni. Much as the Lorton prison officers bartered inmate drawings for commissary credit, so do today’s detainees trade their art for cigarettes, playing cards, even paper and safe art supplies.
The Sheriff’s Department has exhibited artwork from the detention center at Art on the Avenue for two years, and last July, the Torpedo Factory staged a display of Kelli’s students’ work. The exhibit, supported by Del Day Artisans, and titled Off the Grid: Creating Change Through Art Instruction and Inspiration, demonstrated the breadth of previously untapped talent that inmates discovered, and in some cases rediscovered, within themselves via Kelli’s dedication to nurturing their expressive creativity.
