Although raised by his mother and stepfather in a neighborhood pocked by abandoned houses and stricken by poverty, Demell Glenn looks back fondly on his early years with his three siblings in Milwaukee.

In 1980, when he was 8, Glenn’s parents followed an aunt and moved to Madison’s North Side looking for a cleaner, safer place with a better school system.

In James Morgan’s tiny office hangs an oil painting of what he calls a “mindscape,” one of a series titled, “Where I was last night,” which he completed in January.

Art, he said, is part of his healing, an ongoing process after spending 24½ years — nearly half his life — in prison. “It gives me an opportunity to put everything away. To relax. To find that solace,” he said.