By Sara Coello, December 7, 2020, Post and Courier.
At two women’s prisons in South Carolina, butterfly wings spread out across the walls.
The murals, at Leath and Camille Graham correctional institutions, are the first stage of a project focused on healing for inmates who have survived sexual and domestic violence.
Artist Cathy Salser guided 32 inmates, each of whom decorated one of the 16 panels that make up a butterfly. They painted scenes and scrawled poetry that reminded them of their abuse — and the healing that they’ve been able to do since.
“In the beginning we didn’t know what we were getting into, so I was really kind of scared,” one Leath inmate said. “You don’t want people to know the dirty secrets you have. And we just displayed those dirty secrets on a board, imagine that.”
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