Lander alumna Molly Ott’s career as an art educator has grown from teaching art in prison to teaching about prison through art.
Molly Ott and Christian Branscombe’s exhibit, entitled “Better Questions," ran through the first week of November. Ott, a 2017 Lander alumna, said “each piece in this exhibit is an invitation to ask better questions about the structures we take for granted in the United States, like mass incarceration.”
“I am sharing the show with Christian Branscombe, a formerly incarcerated painter who taught in and managed an art room for over a decade at Lancaster State Prison in California,” she said.
The exhibit featured not only Ott’s and Branscombe’s pieces, but the art of incarcerated people.
Jon Holloway, a professor in Lander’s Department of Art, said Ott was an incredible student at Lander.
After graduating from Lander with bachelor’s degrees in visual art and Spanish, Ott—originally from Spartanburg—traveled and completed a post-baccalaureate in sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University. She then moved west to teach as adjunct faculty and earn a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture and post-studio practice at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“In 2020, I was volunteering on a farm and witnessed a ‘prison town’ for the first time,” Ott wrote.
“Most of the local economy was centered around the prison, and its dysfunction and darkness had a noticeable effect on the community. It was here I learned that prison hurts everyone. I began writing to incarcerated people and truly considered their experiences for the first time. Their response letters told me about prison arts programs hosted by Denver University and I began working in these programs shortly after. I recently moved to Los Angeles to learn from California's decades of prison activism and programming.”
Ott’s art in “Better Questions” has been created over her years as an art teacher in adult prisons and juvenile halls. The newest work is watercolor paintings that question the productivity of the “life without parole” sentencing.
“This is a common type of sentencing (1 in 6 people in prison) that ignores the rehabilitation of individuals who have changed over time,” she said.
“I paint with symbols from stories that have been shared by an elderly woman in prison who has inspired me greatly. Chris’s latest work is about grappling with the reality of his friend Richard’s terminal cancer diagnosis while still serving a life without parole sentence.”
Ott said she is honored by the full circle, homecoming moment of being asked to exhibit at Lander.
“I just began my thirties, and this opportunity feels like the gift that opens and sets this new decade on a trajectory of interconnection,” she said.
“I am most excited to build a stronger connection between my home state and my new home across the country.”
Ott was able to speak to Lander students while visiting for the “Better Questions” reception, providing advice about life after college.
“I hold the title of being an artist at the top of my identity because when working with socially motivated goals, an artist is able to be flexible and responsive in ways that other job titles cannot,” Ott said.
“I believe being an artist is to choose a life much more in sync with the natural rhythms of the world and this can welcome a more relevant life. I love answering students' questions about life after college with honesty because that’s what I would have needed to hear.”