It took the shooting death of Timothy Thomas and subsequent riots to transform Old Left activist Steve Sunderland into a political artist.

        “This is the first time I have been moved to use my art to express my sense of injustice,” Dr. Sunderland said last weekat his Northside home. “I've been marching since 1959 and I have never used my art in the civil rights or anti-war movement.”

        Now, the professional grief counselor is creating posters “to boil down fears and concerns” provoked by the April violence and communal responses. The posters are his personal art therapy.

        A few of Dr. Sunderland's drawings and those of adults and chil dren inspired by his posters are included in Civil Unrest in Cincinnati: Voices of Our Community, an exhibit that opens Saturday at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

        His posters — drawn with felt-tip markers — range from faces of fear and police standing over a bleeding body to the portrait of a black man in a clerical collar.

        Ruby Rogers, librarian for the Historical Society and a member of the exhibition team at the Museum

        Center, said the posters demonstrate “one more way that Cincinnati is working to cleanse itself of the anger.”

        Dr. Sunderland, 61, is a professor at the University of Cincinnati's School of Social Work and a co-founder of the Fernside Center for Grieving Children in Norwood. “I have been drawing for a long time and I have used it with children in my practice.”

        However, in April, “I felt enormous feelings of grief watching what was happening in the city. I felt compelled to draw these pictures and I was surprised at what came out. I couldn't stop. I had to document what was going on.”

        Dr. Sunderland's initial drawings were on cardboard because it “seemed to communicate that this is not finished ... that this is a rough situation.”

        He was inspired by African-American artist Jacob Lawrence's modern cardboard images of 19th century black abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

        As Dr. Sunderland's felt-tip images emerged on cut-up boxes, drawing became “a way of documenting my feelings. It just kept flowing out.”

        He showed the first posters to his UC class, “Grief, Death and Dying,” as a lesson in the healing potential of art therapy.

        “It became an unexpected opportunity to look at ourselves and the city as a grieving community,” he said.

        Students responded by making their own drawings.

        Invited by the pastor, he took his work to Clifton United Methodist Church where some congregants drew their own posters.

        “It allowed me to crystalize my thoughts,” Kathy Doane said, recalling how she'd moved from Fairview Heights into Over-the-Rhine two weeks before the riots.

        Ms. Doane said her poster addressed the need to learn the new neighborhood and talk to people she encountered.

        The pastor, the Rev. Jerry Hill, said some members responded by involving themselves more deeply in urban issues and told him they are looking at their own lives in new ways.

        “I'm sure that's what Steve was after,” the Rev. Mr. Hill said. “He wanted to make sure that we did not go back to business as usual when things quieted down.”

        Dr. Sunderlandcarried posters to the Winton Place Youth Center, where he has worked for 15 years. The children began drawing posters.

        Using easier-to-handle sheets of white paper, Dr. Sunderland is introducing poster-drawing to facilitators involved in the effort to help settle the suit alleging racial profiling by Cincinnati police.

        If mediator Jay Rothman agrees, those facilitators, includ ing Dr. Sunderland and his wife, Stefanie, may encourage poster-making in small community groups they will lead.

        He hopes to offer poster-making to Cincinnati police and their families, Dr. Sunderland said.

        “There has to be an opportunity for police to express their pain at the way they've been treated.”

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