News

By Mary Jo Patterson

Instructor Nick Kline had challenged each of his 20 students to design a project around the theme of self-inflicted violence, one of society’s most secret, shameful taboos.

Osorio and her fellow students, undergraduates and graduate students from a variety of disciplines, were to create a “glass book” reflecting the experience of people who choose to cut, burn, or otherwise harm themselves on a regular basis.

Credit: by Eleonora Luongo

Sophomore Samantha Glovin's 'glass book' reflects the experience of people who cut, burn, or otherwise harm themselves.

The students’ books are slated for exhibition at a conference in Washington, where trauma experts will challenge conventional thinking about the nature and treatment of self-induced injuries.

Students were given readings to help them grasp the topic. Some were familiar with stereotypes about “girls who cut.” Others knew nothing about the practice, which some researchers maintain is widespread, especially among young adults.

Then they had to learn how to work with glass. Transparent, fragile, and beautiful, it is also brittle and unyielding.

Ten years ago Osorio, a 22-year-old majoring in graphic design from Bayonne, witnessed her family react with confusion and horror to the discovery that a relative was self-injuring. That memory resurfaced, suddenly making sense, when she read essays and poetry by writers struggling to explain why they hurt themselves. Many described the self-mutilation as a release from emotional pain, or numbness, caused by earlier abuse or trauma.

Credit: by Eleonora Luongo

Sophia Sobers wanted to use the glass to create a dialog, with one side as the body and the other the spirit. 'Glass has imperfections,' she says. 'But they are nothing to be ashamed of.'

“I  . . . understand . . . now,” the words read. 

The unusual assignment came about through Kline’s friendship with Helga Luest (West), president of Witness Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that Luest founded to provide support for victims of trauma and violence. Luest, a former television news producer, was attacked and injured by a stranger while vacationing in Florida in 1993.

Kline and Luest grew up in Sparta, N.J., and became re-acquainted at a high school reunion. Recently they collaborated at a mental health conference, where Kline photographed speakers who described cutting themselves as a way to cope with trauma that had not healed.

He decided to incorporate the topic into his course, “Photo Illustration and Communication,” and collaborated with staff at GlassRoots, a glassmaking studio in Newark serving local youth.

“I wanted a project that was experimental and challenging,” he said. “The connection between cutting and glass is obvious. I wanted the students to push glass in a direction that’s beyond glassmaking as craft, into something provocative.”

Kline invited Luest and Ruta Mazelis, another nationally known trauma expert, to the Newark Campus to see the results. The women will take students’ projects to a conference of state mental health administrators next month.

Many of the students described the assignment as an awakening.

“I never really knew much about SIV (Self-Inflicted Violence),” said Sophia Sobers, while presenting her project. “I wanted to use glass to try to create a dialog, with one side as the body and the other the spirit. This glass is plain, with some imperfections,” she said, gesturing to a page. “But they are nothing to be ashamed of.”

Theresa Concepcion displayed a book whose pages were shaped like daggers.  It sat inside a box lined with satin, which she salvaged from fabric scraps and dyed a rich shade of orange. Etched on the daggers were the words: “Honor my pain.”

Mazelis, a consultant to the federal Center for Mental Health Services, told the students their work could help stimulate reform.

“The general public sees this as purely pathological behavior, or sensation-seeking,” said Mazelis, a mental health professional who confessed having once been addicted to cutting herself. “Society shames and medicates them, maybe even takes away their freedom by institutionalizing them; but we know it’s a universal way of coping, across all cultures.”

Leust and Kline will continue to explore ways the department’s collaboration can expand and benefit students, nonprofits, federal agencies, and communities. Leust is working with graphic design and multimedia faculty on Witness Justice’s outreach materials and to determine how to best create a dynamic means of communicating beyond the confines of language. Witness Justice will continue to use the glass book project to educate trauma survivors and stakeholders through its outreach measures.

"The students have given us some incredible insight on how learning happens with regard to trauma issues, and this informs us as we look at creating a cultural shift in human services across the country to one that is trauma-informed and more healing for survivors,” Luest said.

 all news