One little red dot: How glass art helped this Moscow artist heal after a traumatic brain injury

On a corner of each of Becker J. Gutsch’s hundreds of glass artworks is one little red dot.
In most of Gutsch’s art, the little red dots are on the bottom right corner. If not, they are on another corner. Or, instead of a corner, by an edge. Some of her art does not have a little red dot at all, but a long red line instead.
“I didn’t realize I was doing it,” Gutsch said. “I started putting just a little red dot at the edge of my (glass art).”
The 79-year-old Moscow, Idaho, artist did not start making glass art until 2008. Before then, she was a feature writer for the University of Idaho’s joint biological and agricultural engineering department; she had always wanted to be a writer, and progressed into the profession over her two-decade career with UI.
But in 2007, she slipped on black ice on UI’s Moscow campus. When she fell, she hit the back of her head, sustaining a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury to her frontal lobe.
“The brain injury really changed my whole world,” Gutsch said. “And my whole life.”
Gutsch could no longer do her job. Her TBI affected her memory, focus and attention span. Besides her ability to work, Gutsch said she lost her senses of smell and taste, and her vision remains “unstable” to this day.
She tried to work with her newfound disability for almost a year, but ended up retiring early.
“I tried and tried and tried. I don’t know why I tried so hard to make myself able to do it, but I wasn’t able to,” Gutsch said. “And, that is when I realized how different my life was and how different my personality was and how different my character was.”
Gutsch is just one of 16,800 to 35,000 Idahoans living with a severe TBI, according to the Brain Injury Association of Idaho.
Falls, motor vehicle accidents, sports, violence and other situations resulting in an external force to the head can cause TBIs. Because Idaho is rural and underpopulated, TBI treatment is not as accessible, available or affordable in the state, said Terry Kirtz, a BIAID board of directors member. Gutsch had to travel to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Hospital in Boise to go to rehab for her TBI.
“The biggest issue, really, is because the state is so spread out and some of the areas are so remote,” Kirtz said. “When somebody gets injured, if they can get to the medical care right away … Here, that’s a dilemma.”
The sooner TBI survivors receive treatment, the better. But Gutsch could not go to rehab until 2008, one year after her TBI.
In rehab, Gutsch found friends in therapists and fellow patients, as well as ways to cope with her TBI. One way was through art. Gutsch drew and used oil paints and pastels as part of her treatment. Then, another patient with a TBI introduced her to glass fusion.
“It was like this light bulb went off,” Gutsch said. “Because it was a way I could express how my brain felt and how my head felt, because I couldn’t get the words right.”
When she got out of rehab, Gutsch continued to make glass art. She bought her own glass-fusing materials and kiln, though she could not use it for more than 15 minutes at a time because of her TBI.
Against her glass art instructors’ rules, Gutsch fused glass with copper wires, rusted washers and other broken pieces of hardware she found in junkyards and garage sales in the Moscow area. Gutsch said her brain felt like these broken pieces; making them into art healed her. When fused, glass does not shatter so easily.
“It was kind of like I was putting myself back together,” Gutsch said. “Because let’s face it: We’re all broken. In some way or another, we’re all broken.”
To Gutsch, the little red dots she fused to her glass art represented brain hemorrhages, also known as brain bleeds. She had two in her frontal lobe after her TBI, a coup-contrecoup injury that damaged both the front and back areas of her brain.
“I didn’t even realize that was what I was representing at the time, but every piece I had the little red dot on it,” Gutsch said.
Rehab encourages TBI survivors like Gutsch to make art. Making art helps with “everything,” including recovery, memory and spatial relationships, Kirtz said.
Ryan Law, another Moscow artist and Gutsch’s friend for the last two decades, knew Gutsch for months before her TBI. After it, Law said Gutsch became quiet, nervous and sensitive to light, sound and crowds. She had lost her confidence. But through glass fusion, she found it again. Whether they knew Gutsch had a TBI or not, others saw – and recognized – her art.
“Her work, what she produced was worthy and gave her that self-confidence that, ‘People are recognizing me, people are paying attention to me,’ ” Law said. “ ‘Even though I look at this and my brain is scrambled, people don’t see me that way.’ ”
Gutsch’s first art show was one held by her rehab center. Since rehab, she has shown her art in cities across Idaho, Washington and Oregon and continues to do so as a member of the all-female art collective Palouse Women Artists.
About three years ago, Gutsch moved on to other art mediums: photography, monoprint, collage and assemblage. She also writes poetry, a medium Gutsch said does not require her as many words or as long a process as feature writing. Law, also a PWA member, said Gutsch’s art has evolved to represent not just her TBI but “whatever (she’d) like to put out there.”
“That’s kind of the direction I always took was just, everything I did was reflecting the broken parts of me,” Gutsch said. “And that was so healing, it was so healing to do that.”