The Newark Public Library is featuring art by veterans in a new exhibition, The Combat Paper Project: Healing through Art. The exhibition highlights art on paper made from military uniforms and is located in the third floor gallery of the Main Library.

The exhibition is named after the project through which the work was created. The Combat Paper Project is a grass-roots initiative founded in 2007 to introduce veterans to the process of papermaking as a form of cathartic art therapy. In residencies at the Green Door Studio in Burlington, Vermont, and roving workshops across North America and the U.K., veterans re-purpose and transform uniforms they wore in combat into handmade paper: uniforms are cut, cooked, beaten into pulp, and pounded into sheets of paper, onto which text or images may be added through stencils, screen-printing, and pulp painting. The project provides veterans with a supportive community and a creative process through which to reconcile and share their personal experiences as warriors, and ease the transition back to civilian life.