On October 2, 2024, Gilbert High School students took a field trip to a bookstore called the “Untold Story Bookstore” in Anaheim. They were able to meet and talk to Megumi Nakazawa an artist that uses her love for art to express the untold stories of those who were formally incarcerated. There is a gallery in the bookstore dedicated to a project known as “Faces Of Mass Incarceration” that she first started as a thesis for her senior year in high School.
She has over seventy portraits so far completed, and has been able to share her art with places such as Oceanside Museum Of Art, Salinas Valley State Prison, and of course the Untold Story Bookstore.
Megumi meets with each of her subjects for 2 to 3 hours to paint and hear the stories of each individual. Megumi mentioned “there are always two sides to every story”, and she talked about the importance of taking the time to try and understand how easy it can be to misjudge people because we can be too stubborn to try and understand the other person.
In her paintings everyone had the freedom to choose how they wanted others to view them when listening to their stories so you could get more of a feel of who these people really are. I recommend visiting the bookstore and listening to some of the stories and trying to understand what they were going through and how it impacted their decisions.
