Gallery Exhibition

Artistic Freedom:
Creating While Incarcerated
Paintings by Hector Castillo, Sonny Lee, and Mario Rios

Curated by Impact Arts

June 26th — August 29th 2025
Paintings by Hector Castillo, Sonny Lee, and Mario Rios

Opening Reception: June 26th
7:00 – 9:00 PM

Closing Reception and Zoom Conversation with the Artists: August 23rd
12:30 — 3:00 PM

From June 26th to August 23rd, East Window Gallery will partner with Impact Arts to present work by Hector Castillo, Sonny Lee, and Mario Rios— three artists who are currently incarcerated in the Colorado Department of Corrections. All three men are exceptionally talented painters and storytellers who use their art to communicate profound and often unsettling truths about the American system of mass incarceration. Largely self-taught, they have cultivated their artistic abilities over decades while in the system. They are also leading figures in a growing community of incarcerated artists at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Ordway, Colorado, where they mentor developing artists and help foster a culture of creative expression and support.

As viewers will discover, Castillo, Lee, and Rios have unique styles and subjects they choose to emphasize, but collectively their paintings speak to complex issues like the mental health challenges exacerbated by confinement; strategies for resisting institutionalization and serving time in a manner which preserves one’s dignity and personal agency; a deep frustration with our government’s inability to legislate for meaningful reform; and an ever-present longing for connection with the world beyond the prison walls. Through creative practice, Castillo, Lee, and Rios are able to resist the isolation and dehumanization that many incarcerated people face, and they retain a sense of artistic freedom. They use this freedom to illuminate truths of their lived experience and to provoke a broader public dialogue-one that is both urgent and long overdue.

Impact Arts is a Colorado nonprofit dedicated to generating arts classes, programs, and exhibitions in and around the criminal-legal system. The organization brings visibility to the creative work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists and advocates for the importance of the arts as a healing and transformative tool. Creation of narrative, imagination, and appreciation of beauty are uniquely human instincts; through their programs, Impact Arts seeks to undermine the stigma and inaccurate image most Americans associate with incarcerated people, instead uplifting nuance and humanity. They seek to cultivate awareness and dialogue between incarcerated people and the broader Colorado community, combating the complacency that allows for prisons to be catch-all solutions to poverty, racial and gender oppression, underemployment, and health crises.

Impact Arts website