Glynn Cartledge

An artist who spent over two decades as a criminal lawyer, Glynn Cartledge cross-examines the criminal justice system with a contextual series narrating societal treatment of the accused, convicted, and released.  She paints portraits of formerly incarcerated citizens in both formal settings and as whimsical paper dolls and paints early immigrant floor cloths as contemporary prison rugs. Collaged jail cells, recorded oral histories, and archival documents from both her files and from formerly incarcerated people provide context. Criminal justice provides raw material for a life-long pursuit Glynn has had as a lawyer and artist to investigate, deconstruct, and come to terms with utopian ideas of justice in the face of continued and inevitable misinterpretation, manipulation, and all-too-often its conspicuous absence. Her views of the failing justice system certainly are not original; many share these views, but as an artist and attorney, her hope is that what she brings to the artwork is original because it comes from firsthand experience working within the system.