Visiting the Atlanta Prison Farm

Feral Child
Feral Child

Earlier this month, Caroline and I and some friends (guided by Rob Dunalewicz) visited the abandoned Atlanta Prison Farm, a prison that was in active use for a good chunk of the 20th century and it now mostly abandoned, save for the occasional police training exercise. Today, the prison is covered in street art and graffiti. For me, it was interesting to see old work by Never, from before he began to focus on his owl characters that you can see around Brooklyn today. What’s so cool for me about artists working in abandoned spaces is that there seems to be a freedom to a lot of the work that isn’t found in their work when they are working in public spaces or making work for sale. Here’s a sampling of what we saw:

Never
Never

P1090958

Nos
Nos

P1090966

MRSA
MRSA, maybe
Harm
Harm

P1090981

P1090983

MRSA
MRSA
Sane
Doodles
Doodles
Overunder
Overunder
Catherine
Catherine

P1100023

Meme
Meme
Overunder
Overunder
Kira
Kira

P1100043

Poe
Poe
P1100053
RUINR, Catherine and Sane
Overunder
Overunder
Doodles
Doodles
Doodles
Doodles
Never
Never
P1100087
OH NO
P1100092
OH NO

P1100108

P1100114

Sever
Some great writers with a series of tags from 2002 on a chimney. Now the roof is gone and that’s about a 4-story drop.

Photos by RJ Rushmore