Interview with Sara Kruzan

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Sara Kruzan: My birth name is Sara Kruzan and I believe I'm just a spiritual being having a human experience and the way that I came to my art was being incarcerated. I was given an opportunity to kind of like, express myself in a way with a competition amongst the other housing units and I discovered that I love painting on walls and that I could create anything that I saw. And it was awesome. It was cool, yeah!  

I noticed for me that through a lot of deeper reflection and being mindful, that when I'm painting each stroke somehow represents, for me, the Òfuckery.Ó I know it was a little bold, the ÒfuckeryÓ that I've endured in my life whether that was physical, emotional, mental, or whatever.

So for me, it's kind of like with each stroke somehow I'm empowering myself and taking back that moment and neutralizing it and then planting another seed, right? Like, alright. You know, that's how I see it.

Oh God. IÕve expressed it with anger, frustration. I've expressed it through creating my daughter's bedroom. To where I feel like, no, she needs to have this and this is exactly what's going to heal this generational trauma that was imposed back then, and then I just have to get it out and then I get it out and then it's done. So, you know it's like a hodgepodge of experiences that have been tattooed upon my thoughts and they randomly come up and so that's how I express my art. And sometimes even the different types of art. I don't stick with one type of art. Whatever I'm feeling is what will come out.

I think it's great. ItÕs a great outlet for individuals who have been deeply impacted by traumas and abuse, you know? I've only been out a little bit of time so it's like in comparison to what I experienced before going to prison in comparison to what I experienced while I was in prison, I'm still an infant in my new life. So, I don't know. It's kind of exciting, you know, to see how it all plays out. 

If you want to know my life and  you want to hold this space with me, then I need you to see it from my eye. And I don't know if everyone's able to handle seeing it from my eyes, because my thing is this, if you're willing to be curious or you just want to be nosy, or you just want to know, no! If you want to know what happened and if you really want to make a change, then you're gonna feel it in the very DNA and RNA that we had to feel it, that's how I feel.

Antwan Banks Williams: Yes. [continues to agree throughout]

Sara Kruzan: I don't know if we need a liability, but I feel like people, to make a change, have to feel the uncomfortableness that we go through in the real way without making it okay for them, because the more we make it okay for those that's never had the experience, the more we suffer. That's how I feel. I feel like I've given so much of my life and my experiences, and it's been told by other people. I've had to stand up and raise money for organizations and I did it because I believe I was chronicling. You know what I mean? I was in that space where everyone sit down and have an ÒIÓ statement kind of conversation, but people that are here, they don't want to sit down and have that ÒIÓ statement conversation because they never had to be accountable to the level and the depths that  we've had.

So, when I show up, I do show up; I'm uncomfortable. I'm a little brash. I'm a little intentional. I'm a little bit of everything, because I'm a reflection of what was given to me, you know? And if it can't be that raw, ugly and naked, and I want them to feel the level of vulnerability that we felt every time that we had to be stripped out just to be stripped out.

I hope with this experience that the people that show up--you know how they show up for jury duty and some of them want it and some of them don't--but the ones that get selected, it's like, ÒOkay, I'm going to make this decision based on the facts and the situation.Ó And they weigh out this. And basically like, you know, sometimes those facts can be a little bit off or a little bit strangled or a little bit stifled or a little bit like, Oh, you know, there's so many aspects to the whole story.

And, I just want to invite people to come with such a beautiful openness so that we don't continue to keep people in prison based on just a little bit of information we get. Let art be the infinite amount of information so that someone can make a decision based on something that they innately know.

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