Art Installations

Dayton Castleman: The End of the Tunnel

The End of the Tunnel consists of hundreds of feet of two-inch steel pipe tracing paths in and around Eastern State's original seven cellblocks like giant red lines representing imagined escape routes. The pipes eventually emerge adjacent to Cellblock 4 and scale the penitentiary's 30-foot high perimeter wall.

If, as history suggests, the utter isolation of prisoners at Eastern State tended to bring about madness more often than penitence and reform, then perhaps attempting to regain physical freedom was, under those conditions, a justified and noble act. From within such dehumanizing solitude, a potent spiritual vitality might serve to motivate not resigned introspection, but a plan to escape. Based on the sheer number of escape attempts at Eastern State, a more common practice than contrite supplication directed heavenward through the "Eye of God" skylight, may have been the prostrate inmate prying at cell floor planks, or the contemplative disposal of hollowed walls by the pocketful on the baseball diamond.

The End of the Tunnel's suggested "escape routes" draw the gaze momentarily toward the openings, conduits, patches of earth, and, ultimately, the world beyond the walls that may have been the icons of hope for the inmate who desired freedom above all else.

Dayton Castleman received a BA in Art from Belhaven College, Jackson, Mississippi, and is currently pursuing his MFA in sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His other large-scale work includes a permanent installation at the former Chambers-Wylie Memorial Presbyterian Church across from the Kimmel Center in center- city Philadelphia. Dayton, his wife Karen and daughter Anna live in Oak Park, Illinois.

This installation is completed in honor of Anastasia Madeleine Castleman.