The House That Herman Built was the result of Jackie Sumell’s five-year collaboration and correspondence with Herman Wallace; an inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola (USA). The question they tried to answer was, “what kind of house does a man who has lived in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell dream of after 30 years of solitary confinement?” This question is explored in different modalities including a scale wood model of the house, a CAD model video, as well as dozens of drawings, diagrams, and letters of correspondence.
Jackie Sumell is a multidisciplinary artist and abolitionist inspired most by the lives of everyday people. Her work has been successfully anchored at the intersection of activism, education, mindfulness practices and art for nearly two decades, and it has been exhibited extensively throughout the world. She has been the recipient of multiple residencies and fellowships including, but not limited to, a Source Fellowship, A Blade of Grass, Robert Rauschenberg Artist-as-Activist Fellowship, a Soros Justice Fellowship, an Eyebeam Fellowship, a Headlands Residency and a Schloss Solitude Residency Fellowship. Sumell’s collaboration with Herman Wallace (a prisoner-of-consciousness and member of the Angola 3) was the subject of the Emmy Award-Winning documentary Herman’s House. Sumell’s work with Herman has positioned her at the forefront of the national campaign to end solitary confinement and seek humane alternatives to incarceration.
Herman Wallace, one of the ‘Angola Three’, was incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1971 for robbery charges. In 1972 he and fellow inmates Robert King and Albert Woodfox were charged with murdering a prison guard, and Wallace spent the next 42 years in solitary confinement; maintaining his innocence over the decades. Jackie Sumell began a correspondence with Wallace in 2006, which kicked off years of activism and artistic collaboration. Wallace was released from prison on October 1st, 2013, and passed away, a free man, three days later.
Jackie Continues the legacy of Herman to this day through the Solitary Gardens organization- which can be viewed here. Below is an excerpt from the website:
“Jackie sumell’s most celebrated project, Herman’s House, resulted from an incredible 12-year collaboration with political prisoner Herman Wallace. Herman spent over decades in solitary confinement in the State of Louisiana, for a crime he could not have possibly committed. In his 29th year of isolation, while a graduate student at Stanford University, she began writing him, eventually asking: “What kind of house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot box for almost thirty years dream of?” This question launched our collaborative project, The House That Herman Built (Herman’s House), an ongoing exhibition, installation, book, advocacy campaign, and Emmy Award-winning documentary (Best Artistic Documentary, 2013). After spending over 41 years in a 6’ x9’ cage, Herman’s conviction was overturned and he was released from prison on October 1, 2013. He died 3-days later from the complications of advanced liver cancer. Fueled by the desire to keep Herman’s legacy alive, The Solitary Gardens, turns solitary confinement cells into garden beds that are the same size and blue-print as the cell Herman, and so many others spend decades in. The contents (plants, flowers and herbs) of the prison-cell-turned-garden-bed are designed by prisoners serving their sentences in isolation through proxies on the outside. Central to this project is a call to end the inhumane conditions of solitary confinement, simultaneously inspiring compassion necessary to dismantle systems of punishment and control.”