Cardboard Posters Provide Outlet
for Feelings Brought on in Riot's Aftermath

More on Steve Sunderland's posters

The riots that broke out near downtown Cincinnati in April gave rise to another eruption - this one of emotions. For many of us the emotions remained invisible or unspoken, but a UC professor of social work found a way to literally draw them out.

Magic markers, ink, pencil and scraps of cardboard boxes became the vehicle for voicing these feelings of grief, sadness, anger, frustration, shock, fear - you name it, the feelings were there. Right after the riots began, Steve Sunderland, professor of social work, picked up a marker and piece of cardboard to express his own feelings artistically. He was borrowing on an approach he had observed in a Louisville exhibit by African American artist Jacob Lawrence.

Within weeks, Sunderland began to share his corrugated "graffiti" with the graduate students in his spring quarter Grief, Death and Crisis class and undergraduate students in his research class. The students began making posters of their own in class and asking how individuals should respond to the events that were happening.

Sunderland's poster therapy also spread to Winton Place Youth Center, where young children aged 6-12 - most of them African American - translated their thoughts onto cardbard. "8:00," one youngster wrote in bold, big numbers. "Oh man. Time to go in."

"It was really something they didn't want happening to them," explains Sunderland, about the young Winton Place poster-makers. "They didn't want this kind of explosion of anger to happen," he added.

A Clifton church with which Sunderland works also picked up on the benefits of post-riot poster-making. Clifton United Methodist Church, led by pastor Jerry Hill, continues to create posters that have been displayed inside the church and shared through written summaries distributed to the congregation.

Now Sunderland is also serving as a facilitator in the City of Cincinnati's mediations to settle a threatened racial profiling lawsuit and has begun to use his poster approach in that effort. Two other social work students from UC, Diane Kidd and Paul Davis, are also facilitators, as well as 2001 UC graduate Maleshia Neugebauer.

Sunderland believes that the posters are "one vital way of giving voice to many who are frightened, confused, bitter and hopeful about changing the city's attitudes toward poor and minority citizens. The arts have always played an important role in giving voice to the many feelings of people, although too rarely, giving voice to the victims, or the poor or minorities. I hope this process will spur and/or support other creative ways of giving voice to the deep feelings of those in the university community as well as within our embattled city," he said.

"To paraphrase the Dalai Lama," says a poster made by a student of Sunderland's, "we all want the same thing - to eat good food, to be warm in winter, be loved and live in peace." Then the student added, "Also I think we should have a city wide potluck."

Another student poster observes, "Whites Only/Blacks Only - this is how we remain lonely." Another expresses the complexity of the issues by printing "easy answers" inside a circle with a slash through it. One more declares, "Shock is running through my veins as I watch my 'Most Livable City' turn into the 8th-most segregated city to live in," with a frowning version of the smiley face to punctuate the end.

"If you are afraid or feel unsafe, come to my house," says one Clifton parishioner's poster. "We shall meet one another, share a meal and pray together. Let's not take sides, but pray for all. Let me help," it continues with hand-drawn images of people at a picnic across the bottom.

In the future Sunderland hopes to have an exhibit of some of the posters he has collected.