Based on the oral histories of two illegal immigrants, Many Uch and Gabriela Cubillos, both incarcerated in local facilities, the journalistic show Detained comprises long excerpts of a forthcoming graphic novel by Seattle cartoonist Eroyn Franklin. And we mean long: Two intricate pen-and-ink panels, with rough blue-pencil guidelines still in place, run some 50 feet around the gallery walls. The separate stories are mini-epics read from left to right, studded with dialogue bubbles, covering months of captivity and legal appeals. Franklin conducted field interviews with reporters from the Common Language Project, visiting the notorious Northwest Detention Center near Tacoma, a for-profit facility that warehouses federal detainees before processing and deportation. (In some cases, as SW has reported, U.S. citizens have also been locked up; inadequate medical care, lack of due process, and physical abuse have also been charged.) Franklin illustrates how the Mexican-born Cubillos, for instance, was stopped for a broken taillight on her car, then spent six weeks in NWDC limbo, unsure if shed ever see her kids again. BRIAN MILLER
Mondays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thu., July 8, 7 p.m. Starts: July 1. Continues through July 30, 2010
