Marvin K. Peterson Library Launches Its First Digital Exhibit

There were days when Hector (Bori) Rodriguez wondered if he would ever see life beyond the stark walls of his cell at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York.

From the start of his sentence, Rodriguez began to write in a journal. “I wanted to put my thoughts down on paper and get out what I was feeling – the anger and the emptiness,” he said. Then he began to trace images that he found in books and magazines and that led to drawing and painting on whatever material he could find: cardboard, bits of paper, or drawing pads.

A friend of his sister’s sent him books full of nature images, and he started to paint the colors and patterns he saw in hummingbirds and butterflies. He painted vivid landscapes bursting with color. Other days, he painted the darkness of life in the carceral system. His artistic vision began to take shape.

Art had never been part of his life as a child. He spent his earliest years in Puerto Rico, and he said his life changed “when my mother left me at the age of four.” He was cared for by his grandfather and his aunt, but when they both died, an uncle took him to live in Philadelphia.

“I was seven years old, and my uncle had his son and me selling drugs,” Rodriguez said. “His door had a mail slot, and people would put money through it. My cousin and I would run upstairs to my uncle, and he’d throw the drugs out the window down to the people.”

At 13, Rodriguez moved in with his older sister in New York, and “she did everything she could” to encourage him to embrace school. “But, by then I was damaged goods,” he said. He dropped out of school and, he said, sold drugs. “Then I committed a crime over drugs, and I went to prison for a very long time.”

He was sentenced to 28 years to life. But once he began to draw and paint, he said his vision for his life shifted. He visited the prison library often, learning about artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Salvador Dali.

“Art for me was an escape route,” he said. “My body was there but my mind was never there.”

He was accepted into Bard College’s Prison Initiative program and took as many courses as he could. In 2023, he was released after 27 years and two months and went home to live in the Bronx. He read that the Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) awarded College-to-Career Fellowships to formerly incarcerated people. Through the fellowship, he completed his bachelor’s degree from Bard and had access to centers and programs at Yale and the University of New Haven. With a $60,000 stipend, he rented an apartment and studio space in New Haven and worked on his art.

At a YPEI event, he met University Librarian Lauren Slingluff, M.S., and they began talking about his art. Slingluff arrived at the University of New Haven two years ago, drawn in part because of the University’s involvement in the prison education initiative. “It showed the University’s commitment to make education available and accessible,” she said.

“If you believe in the transformative power of education and of art, you feel it is your duty to share it with as many people as possible,” Slingluff continued.

Their discussion would lead to the Peterson Library’s first art commission – Rodriguez painted two pieces for the library, including “Hymns from Within” – as well as the Peterson Library’s first digital exhibition.

“We have a phenomenal team in the library,” said Slingluff, a third-generation librarian. “When I got here, the staff and students had a list of things they wanted to have happen. They wanted more art in the library and wanted it to be a light and welcoming place.”

“Hector’s optimism is infused into these pieces, and you can be transported by the feelings of joy and vibrancy and color represented in the natural world in his art,” she continued.

For the exhibit, Slingluff wanted to feature the full range of his art and felt the pieces that focused on mass incarceration would work best in an online exhibit. She discussed this with administrators and staff across the University community.

“There was a lot of good dialogue and questions about why this would belong in a library and not in a closed exhibit,” she said. “These pieces are meant to be challenging. We talked about how to share them responsibly. We had a plan and came up with content warnings.”

“Amber Montano, our access and digital services manager, was excited to work with Hector on the digital exhibit, which features paintings as well as videos, spoken word, and his Bard thesis, “Why Did I Do That For? Toxic Masculinity, Incarceration, and the Arts,” Slingluff said.

“It’s important that lived experiences throughout history are documented and preserved for future generations,” she continued. “That is what libraries do.” “In 30 years, if someone is curious about what incarceration looked like in 2025, there is a record of someone’s lived experience. Scholars depend on having this information available now and in perpetuity.”

Although most of the exhibit is online, a sculpture titled “Mississippi” remains on view in the Peterson Library through the end of the semester. “Mississippi” came about after Rodriguez read an article that said that the U.S. spends more than $80 billion annually on incarceration and very little on art and academic programs in prison.

He fashioned the sculpture with metal bars, handcuffs, shackles, an old picture frame, chicken wire, and worn wood, “using items people throw away, and giving it all color, providing an opportunity to take a second look, to see what can happen when things that are thrown away are given a new purpose – things – and people.”

He and Slingluff developed reflection questions, and students have been filling out responses that will be a part of the digital exhibit so “there is a continued open-ended discussion,” she said.

“The response to the exhibit has been extremely positive,” Slingluff said. More digital exhibits are on the horizon as students and faculty have come to her with inquiries and ideas.

Rodriguez said he was grateful to the University and to Slingluff for helping to expand his reach as an emerging artist. “It never crossed my mind that after an almost 30-year prison sentence, I’d be walking the hallways of Yale University or having my artwork here at the University of New Haven. I look at it as a beautiful dream.”