“Invisible Woe”- Ghosts of the Marlboro State Psychiatric Hospital

By kathy kelly

Jason McKittrick is definitely a child of New Jersey. Wisecracking, quick to respond, passionately devoted to the arcane and the mysterious. I like this guy. I really do. Add to his quick wit and no nonsense approach to the strange and mysterious, he also is incredibly talented. This is not a guy you look at and know everything about. Trust me, you don’t.

I’m not an art critic. I reside firmly in the “I don’t know if it is art, but I know what I like” corner. Except, I do know that what I have hanging on my walls right now is art, just like I know I like it. Maybe like isn’t the exact right word. It is hard to describe the work. His figures transcend the technique he uses and seem to occupy the space. Here is a young man in the throes of a breakdown, here a child tries unsuccessfully to comfort her mother, here a man stares blankly through the glass from a world we don’t know to a world he never can.
These are not your everyday figures in art. They are mental patients from the Marlboro State Psychiatric Hospital in Marlboro Township. Or rather, they are the remnants of those patients, for Jason never met them while they lived. He asks, are these images memories? Are they vestiges of lives long passed? Are they remnants, pieces of broken minds and spirits that do indeed linger in the halls of the Marlboro State Psychiatric Hospital, even to this day?
The images are powerful and affecting. Having them on the walls of my shop has been an interesting experience not only because of how people react to them, but also because of the relationship I feel developing, the connection that I feel time is creating.
Marlboro State Psychiatric Hospital is on the chopping block, with bids being taken to demolish it as soon as is expedient. More than an institution it is a piece of our collective history, perhaps darker than we generally preserve. The buildings themselves are remarkable and beautiful. They clearly have had an impact on this young artist.
“It’s kind of a bittersweet feeling knowing that Marlboro is finally coming down. Never in my life has a place inspired so much awe and fueled so much creativity in me. With all the time and the energy I’ve spent there, I will definitely miss the place, but at the same time I feel it’s time to let the place finally rest in peace. I feel as though the buildings and the property still being there is like an open wound from the past that is long over due for healing; a healing that the former (and current) inhabitants yearn for and so desperately deserve, “ McKittrick told me when we discussed the inevitability of the demolition adding, “I think it’s important for people to know that even though the hospital is going to be gone there are still nearly one thousand former patients buried across the street from the property marked only by numbers. The lack of respect shown to the mentally ill, even in death, amazes and horrifies me.”
Jason McKittrick’s work calls to question whether or not those beautiful empty halls are empty after all. What happens to the memories and the powerful emotions witnessed by walls when the walls are torn down? Do they indeed finally get rest? Are the stories finally ended, all the wrongs put right? Is it a release or merely one more thing beyond their control? Perhaps these question help illuminate why these “spirits” or entities or momentary flashes of emotional insight were shown to the artist. Perhaps his gift and his are all the life, all the immortality left to them.
You can stop by Paranormal Books & Curiosities and see his work for yourself. There is no charge and it is well worth the time.