Appointed this year as assistant professor of public arts, social justice and culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Art and Art History, Laurie Jo Reynolds is the kind of activist artist who incites real change with her work. Her years of socially engaged art projects dealing with prison reform was a notable force that helped shutter the Tamms Correctional Center in Southern Illinois last year—a notorious supermax prison known for sensory deprivation techniques.
