As part of an ongoing lecture series Art for Everyone, sponsored by the behavorial health department and held in the Library at Arapahoe Community College’s main campus in Littleton, on October 16 local artist Caroline Douglas spoke about her experience of traumatic brain injury in 2000 that caused her to lose the ability to speak and to walk without fainting and how working with clay helped her heal her brain.
Douglas is a ceramic artist and has been working with clay for over 40 years. In 2000, she was helping to set up for her daughter’s 8th-grade graduation in the gym and was working on a cherry picker when it collapsed on itself and crushed her head. She lost the ability to talk and to walk without fainting. Her injuries also caused her to have intense dreams and visions.
After doing different therapies to help her recover that were helpful to an extent, one day she decided that she just wanted to be in her studio and create with clay. This ended up being the main way she used to heal her brain. Her overall healing process took about 8 years.
She began making clay sculptures of the characters that came to her in her dreams. This ultimately became the main healing tool that helped her regain the ability to speak and walk. As she continued to create her dreams in clay, she started fainting less and started having more fun dreams, Douglas said. She described her work as being delivered to her through her dreams and asking to be created.
Many of her sculptures feature her in some way, “It’s almost like they’re self-portraits, because I’m making my art as a way of finding my inner self, of finding my balance, of finding my own grounding, and clay is my way.” Douglas says.
The Art for Everyone Lecture Series was started by Nathan Abels in 2024. It stemmed from the Shared Visions Tactile Art Exhibition, a collaboration between art students at ACC and students at the Colorado Center for the Blind.
The goal of the lecture series is to “bring in different artists, different elements from the community, people … who are experiencing art in different ways.” Event organizer and head of the Art and Design program here at ACC, Katie Caron, said.
This year, the focus of the Art for Everyone lectures is in relation to art therapy as the series is being funded through the behavioral health department and the art and design center, with plans to start an art therapy program at ACC in the fall of 2026.
The second lecture in the series was on November 6 and featured writer John Cotter. The next upcoming lecture in the series will host ACC’s own Katie Caron, ceramic artist and head of the Art and Design program here at ACC, this upcoming Spring.
