Ryan was a 31-year-old convicted felon who ran the streets of Wood County as a kid, abandoned by a father he never knew and weighed down by a legacy of family addictions and dysfunction, along with the racism he endured as one of the only kids of color in his community.

He says he never really felt like he “had a place in the world” and that he was somehow “less than” the people and the world around him. Nothing in his life made him believe that he had any potential worth or value, and he found his “safety in hiding from the world.” 

As an Uplift WV member and artist,  Idle is one of the lead curators of Inside→OUT: incARceraTion, a traveling exhibit that fosters community conversations and education on mass incarceration and the need for community-driven, supportive reentry in West Virginia and across the nation. This might seem unexpected, as Idle is incarcerated at Mount Olive Correctional Facility, serving a life-without-mercy sentence. He views his work as an opportunity for restitution — to repair the harm he has caused and to help create the world he needed as a child.

Over the past 28 years I have seen that people in prison tend to get some type of clock or timepiece tattoo. I decided to create a timepiece that was an actual clock to represent my experience and outlook on my sentences/time.

Each visit one receives while incarcerated corresponds to that person being 80% less likely to go back to prison. Yet, less than 15% of federal inmates receive one visitor. The Alderson Hospitality House provides love and support for people visiting loved ones who are incarcerated in the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson.