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Grave Plots

The Courtroom Artist Residency Program, where I bring artists to observe Criminal Court with me in Chicago followed by a meal and discussion at Taqueria El Milagro, continues. Every four residencies, I produce a new publication collecting transcriptions of my conversations with residents and sometimes additional writings and notes.

There have been three residencies in the last few months. Imani Elizabeth Jackson and I attended court and wound up observing a judge that her brother has been assigned to. Lucas Reif, whose notes are a presented in a detail above, got to experience a fire drill in the pouring rain where the entire court was evacuated. Upon our return to court, Lucas and I stumbled into the beginning of a trial for a man that attempted to hire a hitman (actually a cop) to murder the judge and prosecutor that were trying his case. Finally, Salome Chasnoff and I witnessed a hearing for police torture survivor Gerald Reed. Once that was over, we walked down the hall and observed the latest defendant of Jason Van Dyke's lawyer Daniel Herbert: another disgraced Chicago cop who is charged with sexually violating a man on suicide watch.

There will be one more residency in the next month and then the fourth booklet of reports will follow. For those wanting to read the first three publications from this project, as well as my booklet on meal-based artist residencies that launched this work, I've created a package deal that includes four booklets at a reduced price. You can get that here. This continues to be a deeply challenging project and I'm grateful to all who have supported it so far through the purchase of these booklets.