One Sentence A Day: Twilight
One Sentence a Day is an archival project conceived of by P+NAP Think Tank facilitator Alice Kim during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. When in-person classes in Illinois prisons were shut down due to the pandemic, letter writing to and from students became the only consistent mode of communication and interaction between P+NAP faculty and students. For over a year and a half, the P+NAP Think Tank persisted via correspondence packets hand-delivered and picked up from the prison every week. Daily journal entries were included in these packets so that Think Tank members could document their living histories by writing one sentence a day. This journaling practice continued after in-person classes at Illinois prisons resumed. Participants in the P+NAP’s 2023 Creative Nonfiction workshop at Logan Prison were also invited to contribute to this project.
You can read more about the archival project here.
Photography by Olivia Mikolai Ridge
Sarah Ross (b. 1976) with Fernanda Ponce (b. 2001) and P+NAP One Sentence a Day Contributors
One Sentence a Day: Twilight
2024
Paper, chalk, paint, video loop
The installation of One Sentence A Day uses a common chart to describe types of twilight, an important time of day as described by Jerel Matthews. For Jerel, the sun rising each morning is a meaningful symbol of his incarceration, representing both a new day alive as well as another day being locked away. The installation, created by Sarah Ross, Fernanda Ponce and writers at Stateville, includes hundreds of prints made by printing watercolor washes and text on black and blue paper. The subtle color shifts require viewers to shift their positions and get closer to see the words and everyday experiences of people behind bars.
Featured here is a selection of One Sentence a Day contributions from 2020 to the present curated by Reginald BoClair, Fernanda Ponce, Benny Rios DonJuan, Lonnie Smith, and Johnny Taylor. Selections include writings from Reginald BoClair, Raul Dorado, Darrell W. Fair, Antonio “TK” Kendrick, Rodney Love, Breanna Maldonado, Ryan Miller, Daniel Perkins, Benny Rios DonJuan, Michael Simmons, Lonnie Smith, James “Jimmy” Soto, Devon Terrell, & Connie Vantlin.
