JustArts is an invitation into heartful connection that transcends barriers.

Rooted in a deep belief in the power of creative expression to fuel change, JustArts was launched by Wendy Jason in March 2025 to foster human connection, challenge harmful narratives and systems, and elevate the creative voices of artists who are courageously resisting carceral silencing. Through exhibitions, workshops, consulting services, and collaborative projects, we cultivate spaces where creativity, trust, care, and integrity drive lasting change.

Our work is informed by close partnerships with directly impacted artists across the country. Their expertise, self-determination, and imagination are central to everything we do.

Our Team

Meet Wendy

A woman with long gray hair, wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and jeans, sitting on a teal chair with her legs crossed, smiling and leaning her head on her hand in a room with wood flooring, a table with papers and headphones, and framed pictures on the wall.

A socially engaged arts administrator, curator, program designer, and community builder, our founder has worked with artists confined to carceral institutions for over 15 years. Wendy (she/her) managed the Prison Arts Coalition, an online community and resource for people interested in or engaged in arts programming in prisons, for 8 years before developing it into a grassroots organization called the Justice Arts Coalition (JAC). After founding JAC in 2019, she expanded the organization into a national hub for artists and advocates creating in and around the carceral system, organizing and curating exhibitions of work by system-impacted artists and developing programs that fostered creative exploration and connection across prison walls.

Wendy has facilitated creative writing, restorative justice circles, and peacebuilding workshops in carceral settings, schools, and community spaces nationwide and holds an MA in Coexistence and Conflict from Brandeis University, where her research focused on the intersection of peacebuilding and the arts. Her work centers the leadership and creativity of artists who are incarcerated, cultivating collaborations rooted in integrity, care, and agency.

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Wendy’s Practice

  • For people pushed to the margins, art can be a means for healing and survival, an act of resistance and self-determination, and a vehicle for connection to others. My work centers the voices of artists who refuse to let carceral systems strip them of their humanity. I forge partnerships and develop infrastructures of support that affirm their contributions as vital to our cultural and communal landscapes. Through exhibitions, correspondence programs, and community events, I create opportunities for shared authorship, ethical exchange, and collective reflection, activating art as a tool for building solidarity and dismantling carceral logic.

  • My approach is informed by years of community-based work and sustained engagement with artists on the inside. As manager of the Prison Arts Coalition and founding director of the Justice Arts Coalition, I led the development of exhibitions, national networks, and programs that facilitated thousands of exchanges across prison walls. Projects like ArtLinks brought people together in classrooms, Zoom rooms, churches, and art institutions to respond to creative work by incarcerated artists through letter writing. The pARTner Project, an arts-focused pen pal program, connected hundreds of artists inside and out for creative exchange through ethical collaboration and mutual care. These cross-boundary dialogues fostered understanding, challenged stigma, and helped cultivate a shared commitment to liberation and care.

  • My ethos has been shaped by my early correspondence with an incarcerated pen pal, my work in shelters and treatment programs where I witnessed institutional harm masked as service and care, and my studies in peacebuilding and the arts and restorative and transformative justice frameworks. Facilitation in carceral settings affirmed my conviction that art invites the vulnerability and relationality needed to disrupt cycles of harm. Visionaries like adrienne maree brown, Mariame Kaba, Judith Tannenbaum, John Paul Lederach, and Luis Rodríguez, whose practices prioritize presence, curiosity, and lived experience, have taught me that change happens through proximity, and that movements thrive when rooted in interdependence, imagination, and integrity.

  • I strive to foster conditions in which creativity moves people into deeper relationship with themselves and one another. I build programs that center the voices of artists experiencing incarceration, challenge carceral logic, and affirm the value of our shared humanity. Through reciprocal partnerships, accessible exhibitions, and participatory public programming, I seek to shift power, nurture connection, and expand the reach and impact of artistic labor too often hidden from view. I want to ensure that artists inside feel seen, supported, and integral to our creative communities, and that those outside who engage with them are moved to reflect, reimagine, and take collective action.

Meet Jazzy

Jazzy (Jasmine) B is a vibrant and invigorating leader committed to transforming organizations to be more people-centered. Jazzy has more than two decades of organizational experience including 8 years in corporate talent and organizational development and more than 12 years leading front-line employees in hospitality. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Hospitality Administration from Oklahoma State University and a master’s degree in Organizational Dynamics from University of Oklahoma. Jazzy has a passion for helping folks leverage their privilege and social capital and honoring humanity. In 2021, The Fancy Hippie Group, was established to positively impact the lives of underserved and underestimated.

Meet Samuel

Samuel González (they/them/elle/ellx) is a multidisciplinary artist, facilitator, and organizational strategist whose work lives at the intersections of creativity, healing, and social transformation. Rooted in Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (QTBIPOC) communities, Samuel creates spaces where personal liberation, collective wellness, and artistic discovery become possible.

For over 20 years, Samuel has worked alongside low-income communities of color as a coach, trainer, and systems builder—designing equitable processes that strengthen organizations, nurture leadership, and cultivate community empowerment. Their consulting integrates strategic planning, organizational development, digital storytelling, and transformative facilitation, guided by a trauma-informed, culturally expansive approach. Whether leading nonprofit initiatives, training facilitators, or designing creative collaborations, Samuel grounds their work in justice, empathy, and possibility.

As an artist, Samuel weaves together photography, writing, sound, movement, and sensory experience to challenge and expand the ways we perceive the world. Samuel’s healing work—including reiki, meditation, dream work, and sound healing—infuses their coaching and facilitation with depth and presence. As a restorative justice circle keeper and certified compassion fatigue specialist, they craft environments where vulnerability, creativity, and repair coexist. Their modalities support individuals and groups in releasing mental fatigue, reconnecting with their bodies, and accessing their own artistic and spiritual wisdom.

Across all their roles, Samuel is committed to helping people and organizations return to their true selves. They invite artists and communities alike to imagine beyond binaries, reclaim Indigenous and diasporic ways of knowing, and explore what becomes possible when we create not for survival, but from the core of who we are.

Testimonials

Every partnership, project, and collaboration helps move us closer to a world where creativity, justice, and human dignity thrive. We are proud to highlight some of the organizations and individuals who have been part of our journey.

The best reflections of our work come from those we collaborate with. Hear directly from partners and community members about their experiences working with JustArts founder Wendy Jason.

  • Wendy's ethic of care is on point. She has been enormously helpful to me as a caretaker of art by formerly and currently incarcerated artists. I'd recommend her consulting services to anyone interested in building their art practice or learning how to navigate galleries and art institutions.

    Steven G. Fullwood, Exhibition Coordinator, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

  • I've known Wendy Jason for a decade and she's always been a stalwart community builder and ally. No one cares more about visual arts as it applies to and helps out incarcerated artists than Wendy. I'm looking forward to seeing where this next chapter of her career in the arts and incarceration space goes to with JustArts.

    Fury Young, Founder & Co-Director, Freer Records

  • Wendy is a committed and reliable partner. She has leveraged years of trust building with incarcerated artists to create meaningful exhibitions that invite public conversation with incarcerated people. Wendy knows the power of this work, and knows that it is most powerful when it is consciously and responsibly executed. She has a step-by-step understanding of the effort it takes to thoughtfully collaborate with incarcerated artists and to showcase their works, and does this with necessary eye toward detail in order to ensure equity and empathy are an inherent part of the process.

    Jeanie Austin, PI for San Francisco Public Library's Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People project

  • Few allies of incarcerated and directly impacted artists have done as much over these past few years to advance this collective work and elevate the voice and agency of artists inside than Wendy Jason. For anyone looking to work with incarcerated artists and navigate challenging dynamics and dehumanizing systems, I encourage you to engage Wendy and her growing community of experts and practitioners. It will facilitate understanding, improve lives, and generate new possibilities.

    Helena Huang, Art for Justice Fund Project Director, 2017 — 2023

  • Wendy Jason not only adheres to her values, passion, and hard work to assist incarcerated artists in their struggles to get their art into the free world, she organized exhibits and numerous workshops on writing and the arts. She made sure the artist were paid. She carried on admirably the voice, style, growth of my mentor Judith Tannenbaum, who passed the Prison Arts Coalition torch to Wendy, knowing she would keep it real and flourishing! Keeping artist integrity on every level! Creating great programs and gatherings of artists. She was and is inclusive and does things the realness way! Bringing incarcerated artists work to the light!

    Spoon Jackson, Poet, Artist, Co-Curator of Rabbits of Realness

  • I have worked with Wendy Jason for the past 10 years. I first met Wendy in 2014 when she invited me to write for the Prison Art Coalition’s blog; an opportunity for which I felt very honored. Likewise, it has been an honor to work with Wendy on various exhibitions and projects. I worked on her pARTner Project which she initiated and made into a very successful program connecting artists inside to artists outside. One of the many things I have valued in working with Wendy is her keen and thoughtful observational skills working with such a complex setting as prison. Wendy always works in the best interests of all involved, bringing these skills to navigate the many levels of incarceration to the successful fruition of projects. Underscoring these skills are her strong ethical and compassionate connections to those with whom she works. These skills, magnified by Wendy’s intense commitment to justice, makes working with her a wonderful experience.

    Treacy Ziegler, MSW Art Director of Prisoner Express (affiliated with Cornell University) and Visiting Faculty at Lyme Academy of Fine Art

  • Those of us on the inside who have worked with Wendy…have been able to embody a new value on our work, which is an extension of ourselves. I understand my rights and how to articulate them so much clearer and more bold now. That is a forever gift.

    EJ, artist & writer

  • We've had the pleasure of collaborating with Wendy Jason on a number of projects connecting our students with artists in her network who are currently or have previously been incarcerated, including pen pal letter writing, drawing exchanges, and attending exhibitions she has organized. She is an energetic and reliable partner to work with as we seek to expand opportunities for socially engaged art to take place at all levels of our program. Our students are very excited to participate in these exchanges, which consistently demonstrate the power that drawing and artmaking have to foster human connections and transcend difficult circumstances.

    Jason Rafferty, Applied Assistant Professor of Art, University of Tulsa

  • As an organizer, public speaker, writer, and successful artist who has worked with many others while contributing to the development and success of numerous art programs and exhibitions internationally, I consider Wendy Jason to be one of the leading organization Executives in the field of arts in the age of mass incarceration. Her passion, willingness to be of service to men and women incarcerated, leadership skills, love for the arts, and visible drive... are all tangibles that make her unique in the lane of art and social justice. As someone who has spent over 31 years in prison pursuing art, I will simply say: "I only wish we had more like Wendy Jason".

    Kenneth Reams, artist, writer, organizer, speaker

  • Working with Wendy has been an amazing experience. Her dedication to bringing awareness to a forgotten segment of humanity knows no bounds. Oftentimes navigating the nuances and complexities of prison can be very difficult. Wendy has been a bridge for system impacted people to connect to the greater society. She has served as a voice for one of the most marginalized and inaccessible population. Through working with Wendy I have personally been able to display my art at many venues. There would have been no other way to do this without her dedication and efforts, not within the confines of prison. I am eternally grateful for what she has done and continues to do for us. My worth and talent has been validated through her work. I describe Wendy as a true humanitarian.

    Cuong (Mike) Tran, Artist

  • Wendy’s thoughtful leadership, collaborative spirit and creative vision has consistently supported and informed my own teaching practice in carceral spaces. She has made it her life’s mission to use her artistic voice to collaborate, uplift and create space for artists and creatives to thrive in.

    Carien Quiroga, Visual Artist & Educator, Solidarity Arts