The Fabric Workshop and Museum presents Jesse Krimes: Elegy Quilts

Elegy Quilts are banners of memory, comfort, and loss. Composed of materials provided by currently and formerly incarcerated individuals, works in the ongoing series (2020-present) are inspired by prisoners’ responses to questions about their inner lives. The quilts are named for US jails and prisons, where an estimated 1.9 million individuals are held, a quarter of the global prison population.

Art beyond walls

While incarcerated, Krimes produced pieces from available materials, including bedsheets, playing cards, soap remnants, and newsprint, smuggling his works through the prison mail and US Postal Service. In prison, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania native established art programs and co-founded artist collectives. Subsequently, in 2022 the multimedia artist founded, and continues to direct, the first national organization dedicated to supporting justice-impacted artists, the Center for Art and Advocacy. He has exhibited internationally, received fellowships from organizations that include the Guggenheim Foundation and Pew Center, and was the subject of an Emmy-winning documentary by filmmaker Alysa Nahmias, Art and Krimes by Krimes (2023).

Since 2013, Krimes has been a lead artist with Mural Arts’ Restorative Justice Program, which supports people affected by incarceration. Riverside (2026), one of the quilts at FWM, is a collaboration between Krimes and Restorative Justice program graduates. The design is replicated in an eponymous mural at 990 Spring Garden Street, dedicated May 28, 2026.

Humanizing incarcerated people

To create the Elegy Quilt series, Krimes relies on the communal sensibility inherent in the form. He probes the thoughts, regrets, and dreams of currently and formerly imprisoned people, prompting them to describe home and imagine an animal that best represents them. With those impressions and the fabric his contacts provide, Krimes creates coverlets depicting domestic scenes, each incorporating an animal as observer and guardian.

Florence (2021) looks like anything but the federal supermax prison in Colorado for which it is named. Instead of the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” the pastel quilt, measuring more than 7 by 5 feet, depicts a cheerful nursery, where a white crib and small rocking horse await a new tenant. Standing guard in the corner is an elegant steed with a crenelated mane and blue bridle. In 2023, 35 percent of federal inmates had a child age 20 or younger.

Marion (2022) illustrates a prisoner’s description of the last place he felt comfortable: the woods near his home, where he went to meditate. The quilt depicts a copse of trees so tall only their shady purple trunks are visible. They shelter an empty chair and a pair of boots left behind. A large crane, a symbol of tranquility and healing, stalks the space, turning its long neck to see if anyone is coming.

Everyday prisons

Krimes’s collaborator on Red Eagle (2020) expanded the concept of imprisonment, comparing school to a prison, a reminder that everyone experiences confinement. Whether in school, at work, when hospitalized, in a nursing home, or for the most unfortunate, in their own home, everyone has felt the loss of autonomy and individuality.

Red Eagle depicts a desk, an empty chair, and a red pay phone on the wall—a principal’s office or a warden’s? An eagle perches on the desk, waiting to mete out justice. This is no symbol of freedom: the bird looks angry. Notice that Red Eagle was made in 2020, when a virus sentenced the world to home confinement.

From collage to quilt to mural

For Riverside, Krimes in 2025 conducted workshops with Mural Arts Restorative Justice graduates who are members of the team that revitalizes community spaces and assists with mural installation: Hannah Bickert, December “Ablessing” Collins, Tajee Flamer, Tasheema Flamer, Joyzoé Montes-Paris, Tysean Moore, Eleonore “Tiny” Noncent, and Rahsaan Standback.

The young artists created individual collages representing themselves and their experiences, and Krimes mined their concepts for Riverside. The design includes contributions from each artist, including a flaming pen from Collins’s The Space I’m Becoming (2025), and a barn owl from Tasheema Flamer’s Untitled (2025).

Measuring about 7 ½ by 4 ½ feet, the quilt imagines a sanctuary dominated by a black claw-foot bathtub. The owl perches on the rolled edge looking out, as though expecting a visitor. Opposite him stands a brightly colored tree, and the retreat is wrapped in a soothing dark green drape. The institution for which the quilt and mural are named, Riverside Correctional Facility in Northeast Philadelphia, houses women inmates and pretrial detainees. According to the US Prison Guide site, the facility offers programs aimed at rehabilitation and reintegration. Women in prison are not the norm: the most recent statistics indicate that men make up 93 percent of incarcerated people.

Freeing imagination

By initiating conversations with people inside the walls, persuading them to reveal a gentler, more vulnerable side they otherwise wouldn’t, Krimes compels viewers to think of them differently. He reveals them as individuals who, like the rest of us, remember home, worry about children, experience regret, and hope. Further, by drawing attention to the magnitude of incarceration in the United States, Krimes questions the wisdom of the American system of justice. And by demonstrating the humanity, and cultivating the creativity of incarcerated people, he reinforces the notion that gave rise to Mural Arts Philadelphia 40 years ago: that channeling imaginative energy builds stronger communities and a more supportive society.

At top: Jesse Krimes’s 2025 ‘Riverside’: Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles; 87 1/2 x 54 inches. © Jesse Krimes. (Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.)

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