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Brain Injury Survivors' Art, Lives Featured In Community Exhibit
An art show Sunday at the Corralitos Cultural Center exposed the artistic abilities and stories of people living with brain injuries. The pieces in the show "The Secrets of Change" ranged from rough drawings to paintings to mixed-media pieces, from a realistic and vibrant green reptile to intimate thoughts and fantasies depicted in words and color. Deborah Williams works with the Central Coast Center for Independent Living, which organized the show. She said the show created valuable opportunities for the public to better understand people with brain injuries as well as an opportunity for people with brain injuries to display their abilities. She noted that the art in the show included little that would indicate the artists have brain injuries. Within the context of the show, however, the work told the stories of the lives of the artists. Laura Abraham, 40, said she didn't know until about four years ago that she experienced brain seizures regularly. Abraham was a prodigy at 16 months, speaking with a complete vocabulary and dressing herself, she said. She had to learn to speak and dress herself over again, however. A viral infection when she was two scarred the left side of her brain. She has difficulty with time and numbers, and she has a hard time learning things logically, she said. She can absorb ideas explained through creativity, however. While she said she had trouble learning basic math, "Later in life I could understand Quantum Physics because it was explained to me in a right brain kind of way." Her difficulty with learning meant she was sidelined academically. She was alienated from children her age because she couldn't understand the strange rules of social cliques. "I was always frustrated because I knew there was something wrong with me and I didn't know what it was," Abraham said. She warns that the frustration arising from a brain injury can be absorbing.
Abraham has a message about overcoming this. "We have to love who we are now in order to be the fullest expression of who we can be as brain injured people," she said. That is the message embodied in her work "Love Matters," a mixed media piece including water colors, pastels, glitter glue and hand-made paper. The work is full of valentine-style heart shapes, many of which have wings. Scrawled in rough black letters is the message, "Love your brain." Abraham said people with brain injuries have to learn to love who they are after their injuries. "They are completely different people than they were before their injury," she said. "You have to release who your were in order to step into who you are now." One piece was a simple drawing of a van, centered and small compared to the available paper. Christi Voenell, who lead the class, said the artist had told her a van had changed his life for the better.
The artist behind the van drawing had injured his brain when he was riding a motorcycle and collided with a van. He said, however, that his life is better now because the injury stopped a drug problem.
Reprinted with permission. ©Register-Pajaronian 200