Flava Healing & Hope
Finding a Path Forward through Art
May 1-17
Art can be uplifting, unsettling, evocative, and transformative.
At FTC, we curate exhibits to expand on themes featured in the plays performed on our C.H. Douglas & Gray Wealth Management Stage. For our current production of Clyde’s by Lynn Nottage, the focus is on writings and visual art created by current and formerly incarcerated individuals. We hope this exhibit will spur deeper perspectives, understanding, and conversations among our patrons.
Join us on Saturday, May 16 at 2pm for a free preshow event where artists Vernon T. Bateman and Anthony Radford will be joined by Debra Des Vignes from the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop. Discounted tickets will be available for participants to the 4pm performance of Clyde’s.
Meet the Artists
Vernon T. Bateman
Vernon T. Bateman is a self-taught artist, author, and keynote speaker who transformed 26 years of wrongful incarceration into a mission of resilience, creativity, and education. While confined—often in solitary with nothing but a golf pencil—he created hundreds of works of art, authored five children’s books, and built a lifelong philosophy centered on turning pain into purpose. His children’s books are available on Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
Today, he speaks to college students nationwide, using raw storytelling, visual art, and lived experience to challenge perspectives and inspire transformation. His lectures include:
- His real-life transformation from wrongful incarceration
- Conversations around justice, identity, and resilience
- The reality of the justice system
- Turning pain into purpose
- Deep student engagement and reflection
- Visual storytelling through original artwork
- Optional live art creation during events
His story doesn’t just inspire — it shifts perspectives immediately. Learn more about Bateman here.
Anthony “Tony” Bateman
Mixed-media artist, independent curator and art instructor Anthony “Tony” Radford, was first inspired through his desire to share his own art as well as the work of a multitude of talented African-American artists living, working and creating in the Indianapolis community, an environment where relatively few Black artists’ work were/are viewed by the public-at-large.
He has been the recipient of several honors and awards and has been featured in several publications, including the Indianapolis Star Newspaper, NUVO Magazine, The Indiana Herald Newspaper, The Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper, Marion County Public Library (IMCPL), which has been renamed the Indianapolis Public Library (INDYPL)’s “Reading in Indianapolis” Magazine.
Radford’s life as an artist, activist and independent curator of the 28-year run of the Meet The Artists’ annual art exhibition and gala was recently documented and showcased in the first of a kind book (in Indiana), featuring African American visual artists entitled, “HORIZON Contemporary Indiana Artists of Color” by interdisciplinary artist/author D. Del Reverda-Jennings, a fellow colleague and BAIA member.
The artist, a member of the local advisory committee of the Indianapolis Art Center (IAC), is a former artist mentor and art instructor for the IAC’s ArtReach Program (a youth art program which originated in the early 90’s by noted local African American artist John Andrew Spaulding). Radford is a longtime art instructor for Young Audiences of Indiana, has worked intensively as an art facilitator with the Indianapolis Westside’s Clifton Street area neighborhood youth, and facilitates art workshops for INDYPL.
Radford is known throughout Indiana for his signature mixed-media artworks and “Pop-Can Art” crafts, although his preferred area of practice is of a serious context with a diachronic message within his eye opening, opinionated, collaged statement pieces. Much of this work is based on social and political commentary, and leans toward past racial injustices, representing revolt against traditional doctrine and unmasking the desire to overlook or to forget yesteryears’ issues of hatred and bigotry.
Indiana Prison Writers Workshop
Indiana Prison Writers Workshop is a creative writing program that brings structured, 12-week workshops into correctional facilities across multiple states, using storytelling as a tool for personal growth and transformation. Through guided instruction, peer feedback, and reflective writing, participants develop critical communication skills, emotional awareness and self-regulation, and a stronger sense of identity. Rooted in the belief that storytelling builds literacy, resilience, and dignity, the program creates space for individuals to process their experiences and reframe their narratives while preparing for successful reintegration into society.
The writers featured in this curated collection are men and women currently incarcerated who have participated in the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop, a structured creative writing program designed to strengthen writing skills and deepen self-reflection. Through their work, they examine their past, make meaning of their experiences, and share hopes for the future while developing valuable skills that support successful reentry into society. Patrons will encounter a curated collection of short stories that offer an unfiltered look into lives shaped by challenge, accountability, and growth, presented through a powerful visual storytelling format that captures authentic voices from inside the system.