“This is the story of how I wound up on death row and stayed in that prison for nearly 42 years,” wrote fiber artist Gary Tyler in the prologue to his new memoir, Stitching Freedom, published by Simon and Schuster in October. The book recounts the harrowing experience Tyler went through as a Black teenager living in the recently desegregated South in the early 1970s, when he was falsely convicted in the shooting of a white boy, and Louisiana’s deeply racist court system sent him to the state’s infamous Angola prison. “I went into Angola as an adolescent and emerged as a man. I achieved things others would never have thought a person could accomplish in prison.”
Among those achievements was learning to quilt, a skill Tyler picked up while working in the prison’s hospice program, where he also built the deep well of empathy and compassion he openly draws from today. Finally released from prison in 2016 at the age of 57, Tyler has dedicated his time to advocating for others who have suffered from injustice, in part through the art he creates. His quilts depict scenes and figures from his life, like the Angola Prison Rodeo, or symbols of freedom and redemption, like butterflies and birds. A selection is now on view in his first gallery show in Los Angeles, “Illuminations from a Captured Soul,” at Official Welcome in MacArthur Park, through December 20.
Gary Tyler, (2025). Photo courtesy of Official Welcome.
Ariel Pittman, who opened Official Welcome in May after working at Vielmetter and Various Small Fires, met Tyler through a friend, curator Allison Glenn, who organized his first solo show at Detroit’s Library Street Collective in 2023.
“That was the first time that I heard Gary’s story, and I was just blown away,” Pittman said. Her reaction was not just because of the injustices Tyler faced for most of his adult life, but the way he never allowed them to break his spirit or his resolve to do something positive with his life. “In a way, he arrived in this situation which he never accepted, he never stopped trying to get out of, but he also was able to be present with other people and contribute to a community and make beautiful things… it really inspired me.”
Pittman, who has been involved in her own community outreach following the California wildfires, also remembered hearing a story about a performance Tyler set up during a fundraising event for the organization Safe Place for Youth in Pasadena, where he worked after his release, helping to keep unhoused young people off the street. At that event, Tyler had a performer set up outside the venue dressed as a panhandler, so that patrons would walk past him as they entered. Later on, that same performer joined the fundraiser and revealed that he was a talented musician, singing on stage—and describing how he was treated by the guests. “I was like, this is the most profound, socially engaged institutional critique artwork that I’ve heard of,” Pittman said.
Gary Tyler, (2025). Photo courtesy of Official Welcome.
Being able to empathize with the plight of others, while not being afraid to call out the prejudices that keep people stuck in straitened circumstances, is what sets Tyler’s work apart. “Not only is he just this wonderful, creative guy, he knows how to call people into this empathetic space,” Pittman said.
On top of that, the quilts he creates are objects that draw on an art historical and social tradition of “finding ways to record and write stories and histories that would be very purposefully erased in our society”—from the narrative quilts created by African American communities during and after slavery, to the work of fellow artists Faith Ringgold and Bisa Butler. His work also allows him to reclaim his own image and story—something he couldn’t do in prison, when he had to rely on lawyers, journalists and activists to speak for him—and those of other incarcerated men and women. “He gives them dignity and light and respect,” Pittman said.
For example, several of his quilts on view at the gallery recreate scenes from the Angola Prison Rodeo, an annual event in which death row inmates take part in dangerous competitions for relatively little money that would allow them some small comforts from the commissary. Others depict prisoners involved in Angola’s drama program dressed as knights for a performance, who seem exhausted from fighting the unfairness of their situation.
Similarly, a limited edition print issued by Official Welcome with the local publisher Ollin Editions, is based on a self-portrait quilt Tyler made from a photo taken of him outside the prison, showing him as a young man in handcuffs, who nonetheless keeps his head held high. The title of the work is Defiant, 1976—the year Tyler was scheduled to be executed, at the age of just 18. That same year, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s death penalty laws were unconstitutional, and Tyler’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. It would take him another four decades to secure his release.
Gary Tyler, (2025). Photo courtesy of Official Welcome.
Creating such inspiring imagery out of so much hardship also serves as “a powerful rejoinder” to things like Confederate monuments, which glorify “the worst of our history,” Pittman said. It also raises important questions: “Who writes history, who memorializes things? What do we remember? What do we save?”
“Illuminations from a Captured Soul” is on view at Official Welcome, 672 S La Fayette Park Place, Suite 46, Los Angeles, California, through December 20, 2025.
Artist Gary Tyler will be speaking about his book, Stitching Freedom, at the Black Police Precinct and Courthouse Museum in Miami, Florida, December 7, 2025, 1:30–3:00pm. RSVP required.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
