Income Inequality
2025In the fall semester of 2024, two groups collaborated to create this four-by-seven-foot public artwork. Eight students at the Utah State Correctional Facility and six youth advocates from the Sugarhouse Boys & Girls Club took part, with the youth advocates selecting “income inequality” as the artwork’s theme. The Boys & Girls Club primarily serves low-income families; all eight students in the prison had been members of the club when they were young.
Artist Mollie Hosmer-Dillard hosted discussions on Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America for each group, and conveyed the reactions to the reading from one group to the other. Each of the 14 students then created a drawing that illustrated one aspect of poverty or income inequality, and sharing the drawings from one group to the other became its own form of spirited intergenerational exchange.
To unify all 14 drawings, Hosmer-Dillard added images of computer glitches between them, since critical conversations on A.I. had been part of the discussions, and since that imagery seemed to capture the emotional turbulence these difficult conversations produced.
With a grant from the Salt Lake City Arts Council, this artwork is currently being fabricated out of metal for installation on the side of a Boys & Girls Club building.
Income Inequality
2025
fabricated artwork will be 4 x 7 feet
D.G., R.T., S.K., B.A., A.J., I.L., J.O., K.V., T.P., Z.S., Y.D.,V.G., T.G., B.B.
2025
fabricated artwork will be 4 x 7 feet
D.G., R.T., S.K., B.A., A.J., I.L., J.O., K.V., T.P., Z.S., Y.D.,V.G., T.G., B.B.
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Youth Support
2025Also in the fall of 2024, 11 students at Salt Lake Valley Detention Center were invited to create a piece of public art that would then be donated to a local organization of their choice.
After some brainstorming, students chose the West Valley Rec Center (also known as the West Valley Family Fitness Center), with one student saying his mother had told him about a program to make rec centers in Salt Lake County free for young people under the age of 18.
The class read a newspaper article about the program and discussed it together as a group. Students made a connection between incarceration and the lack of free places for young people to hang out with friends.
Youth Support
2025
27 x 45 inches
B.K., T.T., C.V., A.H., E.S., J.L., V.V., D.G., M.C., C.A., J.F.
2025
27 x 45 inches
B.K., T.T., C.V., A.H., E.S., J.L., V.V., D.G., M.C., C.A., J.F.