Did you know that for decades, a painting worth millions of dollars was tucked away in the back hallway of the women's facility on Rikers Island? A painting that was shunted there after being painted over and stashed in a jail kitchen in the 90s, only to be saved thanks to the intervention of a Black woman CO? Almost no one knew that—until a team of documentary filmmakers and activists, plus the revolutionary, undersung Black woman artist who painted "For the Women's House" back in 1971, intervened to bring the work of art out from behind jail walls, to be replaced by a new work of art created with the women held in the same facility.
"Paint Me a Road Out of Here," a documentary produced and directed by Catherine Gund, founder and director of the nonprofit Aubin Pictures, follows the story of that painting, which artist Faith Ringgold created as a way to give women jailed on Rikers—and beyond—hope for a future where they could be athletes, bus drivers, politicians, and even police officers, careers that were broadly inaccessible in the 70s. The film also follows the story of Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, a formerly incarcerated Black woman artist, who gave birth to her son while shackled in a prison hospital over a grueling 43 hours of labor. Baxter was, at the time of filming, commissioned to create a new piece of art for Rikers under the de Blasio administration—a plan that (spoiler alert) withered away under the incoming Adams administration.
"Because my art is filmmaking, I had to figure out a way to make the film not 'entertaining,' but something that keeps people really interested," director Gund told Hell Gate. "So, for the whole team, because filmmaking is such a collaborative sport, we really came to this idea of how the two were parallel: the way the painting "For the Women's House" was treated was parallel to how the women are treated."
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