Our Spirits installations developed during a year-long project on symbols of freedom with my weekly class at San Quentin. Birds frequently appear in inmate work and there are many birds flying in and out of San Quentin because of its location on San Francisco Bay. Concurrently, I was making work for a gallery that was in a former house and its boarded-up windows seemed a powerful metaphor for prison. Many inmates find a type of freedom and sanctuary in prison art studios; these pieces are about that experience.