Workshop Feedback
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Part of Permanent collection at Owen Community College, Toledo, Ohio Piece is viewable in the DisAbilities Students Office
The composition is centered around the symbolic person with a brain injury, situatedin the center of a huge blue question mark. Feelings of being isolated, dysfunctional,and mixed up is displayed by the many arms. A ladder rests along the left side, reachingupwards off the canvas towards success. Laughing faces chastise, point at, and patronizethe person with a brain injury. The composition is surrounded by blue flames, representingthe blue hell one identifies with so strongly since he's been injured. The yellowstick figure runs away from the person with TBI. Foremost this figure representsthe person with the injury, running from accepting the new Self. Wanting to run tothe way thing were, yet unable to do so. This figure also represents political figures,professionals, and family and friends who remain in denial. The empowered and realizedpeople - the participants - with brain injury demands justice and equality and yellsto the fearful yellow figure "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?". The group fundamentally knowsthat they all must embrace their new Self, and they are glad to get supportive helpfrom others.
Participants' Stories:
THE ART WORKSHOP I
Today...
I met a man who has a brain injury as I have a brain injury.
He was beaten to this condition.
Mine came via neurotoxic fumes.
And we are very similar.
I transported him from some slum-landlord's dream
to
a wonderland, upscale, private home.
I chatted with a man so isolated and bewildered,
it made him aggressive and friendly,
it made him hostile and cheery,
it made him reclusive and jovial,
it made him confused.
He met many more people with brain injuries like us.
With the passage of one day he has gained
friends, men and women compatriots,
associates, less color awareness, and a much greater esteem and sense of his good self.
*The Toledo Head Injury Support Group is a successful social organization as can be measured by this man.
THE ART WORKSHOP II
Today...
I struggled with the wheelchair,
I struggled with going to the potty,
I struggled with dressing,
I struggled with holding a fork,
I struggled with the paintbrush,
I struggled with the stairs,
I struggled with the gravel and stones
,
I struggled with the van seat,
I struggled with the moviehouse chair,
I struggled with the bed and the bedding.
I struggled with all these things as
I assisted my friends who are
confined by their brain injuries
to the wheelchair.
Dedicated to Connie, Martin, Jeff, Dave, Mike and many others.
THE ART WORKSHOP III
Please do not be confused by what cannot be seen.
This isn't a magic trick.
This change of life has no chronology.
This new consciousness is so bewildering.
After six years I am still groping,
wandering,
wondering,
Trying so very hard to learn new stuff-
But I think those circuits are broken!
Please help me be all that I can.
I can still spell.
I can still form letters.
I can still maek a sentence,
But does the sentence make sense?
Let me try to write this thougt
For another one like me cannot
conquer the page, the pencil, the prose
.
Please help us who have these new beginnings
-unplanned beginnings
-unwelcomed beginnings.
Pray you, you do not join this number, do not become a new member of people with brain injuries.
THE ART WORKSHOP IV
"Write!" she said,
"Write!" she entoned,
"Write!" she thundered,"
Write!" she mustered our cluttered, weary minds to focus to purpose.
"Think!" she said,
"Think!" she intoned,
"Think!" she thundered,
"Think!" she muttered and thought her own long thought to focus to purpose.
"Feel!" she said.
"Feel!" she intoned.
"Feel!" she thundered.
"Feel!" she mused and I felt the flow afresh and gleaming as the river, babbling and dancing like the river,the sanguinous river,the flow of thought and life...
"Rejuvenated!" through the Art Workshop.
Thank you Bittin, Love B
April 26, 1995
My name is Connie Cummings. I'm a survivor of a head injury in 1985. I'm not mentally disabled. BUT I am physically disabled. My ex-boyfriend left me after this happened.
It's hurt me alot cause I've been in nursing homes ever since. My doctor damaged my ataxia nerve in my brain. And depression increases it. In my particular case it hurts me alot. My doctor is giving me a depression pill which I think is helping me alot. Iknow it's hurting me alot; I don't get away with my family and talk. I need to talk to someone privately and you don't get that opportunity in a nursing home.
For being physically handicapped and in nursing homes ever since I've done pretty good for me. I thank the good lord I wasn't mentally handicapped,because I'm really rather smart. Although I've been fightng this all alone these years, and it's been arough road, I am learning to write, and type and Im active in church and in helping motivate my fellow patients.
8-24-95
I, Danny Shrader, am happy to be alive after my brain damage which happened Dec 24, 1985. I was in ICU at Riverside Hospital. The Dr.'s had gave me up, for real. They had told my uncle and other people in my family to go home. The Dr's said I was not responding to anything. My wife and people did not go home. My wife started praying to God to bring me back. Then other people came in and praying for me. The next day I started coming to after being in a coma for 11days, and 2 days coma toast. I don't really think the Dr.'s for me being alive. I thank God. Every morning before I get up, I think God for my life.
I don't care what anyone says. You don't ever get used to havign brain damage. Being crippled with short term memory. I can't really start a conversation with hardly anyone becaue you get like brain locked at least I do. They won't let you have a driver lice becouse you don't any or all of your reflexes. And you can't think fast enough to controle your car. I guess I am getting ahead of myself. I haven't wrote anything about how I got my brain damage. First I shouldn't of got hurt at all. But I did. I think that is the main reason why I'll never wil get use'd to have Brain Damage. Here it goes. The story of my brain injury is It happened on Christmas Eve 1995. My brother and I were working for our selfs. We had finished up a job and got paid, and this was in the middle of the after noon around 3 to 3:30 and all the time we were drinking. I was married at the time of my head injury. Her and I were fighting before I got hurt. My wife had left and went to her sons house by another marriage. I woke up in Riverside Hospital didn't know were I was at don't know who I was. Half the time I don't know who my wife was. My wife said about every 15 min I would ask were I was strapped down with one arm tied to the bed. The head aches I ask why my legs and arms were tied down, all the time I couldn't walk. I would never be learn it
My first head injury happened at age 5 yr, I knew something was wrong up there, but didn't know quite what. It happened to be epilepsy. My second head injury was electrocusion. That caused brain swelling, and sever head aches. I am 42 and started taking medicine four years ago. How can I cope a little better. My life would have been a little better if I would have known. If you have a head injury don't be ashamed there is help.
-Curtis Thompson
-LYNETTE
Since my injury I feel that I have a calling to...
"Try" and express myself in a positive and meaningful way that does little ot intimidate one's self and alot to explain "my " way of Interpretation.
And the way I feel, to call upon is a viual, as well, mental host to absorb; a picture, painted.
The "Host" is/are pictures of problems associated with my (as well, others) confrontations with overcoming Rehabilitation of a Head-Injury. My Head-Injury occured on July 4, 1987, I was "driving" bck to a party in which I agreed to take an old-school-chum home. The results, along with a "Decrepid-Road" full of "Pot-holes" allowed me into a 6 week coma upon my car flipping over 6-7 times with no seat-belt. Well, alcohol played a Big role in "that" story of my life. Where upon it does no more.
I think that my life sucks, not always though. Sometimes its really good. I had one year of college to go and all of a sudden-BAM-Brain tumor. So, in two days they operated onme. It seems like I could go right back to school after that, but everything came down on me. My grandma died of emphazema after living with us for a year. As far as my changes, my memory was swiss chees with lots of holes! I pound and bang on my hips all the time. I count in patterns of four but I don't stop, I go on and on...it drives most people crazy! If I couldn't hit and bang, I feel I could go nuts!
I go to church every Sunday. I am thankful to be alive. I thank God for my life every day.