Creative Resolve

“The creative mind assists in navigating the terrain of living, inspiring by way of expressive language: art, design, architecture and words.”

Upper West Side Project | Carl Barnett Design/Studio

The creative mind assists in navigating the terrain of living, inspiring by way of expressive language: art, design, architecture and words. They are all layered together, tethered to our need to find our way in this world. To find and express who we are: vacillating the hurling future.

“To move forward is to trust our intuition, our creative mind, empathy and the humanitarian bud within.” 

It’s not that we can’t find our away, it’s just that our paths forward are knotted in a thread of disillusion and greater uncertainty, a dimming of our light towards the future. But the counter to despair is the equilibrium of hope, the act of doing, the nudge of knowledge. This is where we have resolve, where the creative mind takes hold, burrowing under the stones of fear, greed and hate. To move forward is to trust our intuition, our creative mind, empathy and the humanitarian bud within. 

Untitled Painting | Carl Barnett Design/Studio

Nurture And Nature

“The more we nurture ourselves and our environments both natural and built, the more fulfilled our lives and those of others to come, will be.”

Carl Barnett Design/Studio

How we live today speaks volumes to how the future will look. The more we nurture ourselves and our environments both natural and built, the more fulfilled our lives and those of others to come, will be. This is our instinct of nature and nurture, of not only survival but empathy and the inspiration of beauty: us and we.

This is not theory, it’s fact, built in our bodies from the stars. To nuture nature is to care for ourselves, and all that dwell within our shrinking circle. To know that we are all connected, feeling it in our bones, and seeing it in the history above.

“Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses – especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” - Leonardo da Vinci

To Create And To Collect

“Our cravings for beauty are emotional, genetic in its drive to bring forth the carnal within. Releasing the animal, and letting the bird of desire sing.” 

Paintings | Carl Barnett Design/Studio

The need to create and collect much like the need to consume food, satiates, its a personal pull to satisfy, a consumptive drive that sustains both body and mind. This harkens back to our days of cave dwellings and cave paintings, an instinct to create and to survive. Our cravings for beauty are emotional, genetic in its drive to bring forth the carnal within. Releasing the animal, and letting the bird of desire sing. 

Ceramic Vessel | Kathryn Robinson-Millen

To collect and to create vacillates the landscape of the inner and outer self, easing the mind as we try to make sense of this world. The earliest examples of ceramics were spheres, a purity of form and making. I imagine this being a feeling of ease that tamed the anxious mind, as the night sky blinked, and the wind and animals howled. Creativity is basic in its instinct to express and to ease our ways of living, the ceramic bowl holds our food, while the vase holds the flowers that inspire. But the impact is not basic, it goes deep into our psyche, as we hold, move past and graze with our eyes. To collect speaks to the same emotion as creating, to posses another’s creative endeavor is to share their moment of personal rapture, flow and expression of a deeper inner dialogue. To collect someone’s creation is to then take part in an ancient conversation, one that words cannot fully express. 

“To collect is to be an historian, preserving but also writing, adding to history as time moves on.” 

Why one collects and creates is universal as it is personal, each of us have our own why, our own reasoning and desire. It’s genetic as it is emotional, tied to history and our immediate need for creative resolve and inspiration. Much of what we collect has its own pedigree, of who created and who owned, where it was made and when. An antique table can have an immense history, shown by its carvings and nicks, the hand applied stain that may have gone to black, or the hand writing marked in a drawer. Their is a history to every hand created item, a history of design influence and the hands that touched it. To collect is to be an historian, preserving but also writing, adding to history as time moves on. 

The act of creating and collecting documents time, person and place, a biography as it is a geographic demarcation. Its an intuitive drive of expression, linked to others as it is to ourselves, to ease and inspire, paying homage to beauty and to life. 

Visual Language.

“To have a conversation, we don’t always need a person present nor spoken words, a dialogue can be with an object, a space, an arch above a door.”

Untitled Painting | Carl Barnett Design/Studio

To have a conversation, we don’t always need a person present nor spoken words, a dialogue can be with an object, a space, an arch above a door. It can be a simple viewing of beauty that sparks wonder and magic, a conversation of emotion, thought and touch. It can be as short as a glance or hours long as reading a book, dissecting its words, and consuming its sentences. It can be just that, reading and conversing, consuming the information given: digesting what’s in front of us, or what surrounds.  

Ceramic Vessel | Kathryn Robinson-Millen

How we interact and move in our spaces is telling, what we surround ourselves with and how we engage. Our mindset and mood are either transformed or reaffirmed, depending on what we choose to see or in fact wish to change. We can be pulled deeper or pulled from, which is what beauty and space allows, a guidance of mind and body, reassurance or transformation. It is the nuances of strokes and carvings, as it is shapes, colors and images that spark thought and pull emotion, inspiring our day and even our future. How we live can be a catapult or a moment of ease. 

“An object made in Africa, held in Nebraska, tells of both people and location, an ongoing dialogue, a sharing and reading of stories.” 

The view from our windows are as important as the view to our inner walls and spaces. Views transport, wether it is a framed window or framed art. The objects we collect, handmade or not, tells stories of the world around, both by the maker and the imagery, shapes and materials chosen. Objects are windows, framed by the walls they share, opening the world, our mind and emotions. An object made in Africa, held in Nebraska, tells of both people and location, an ongoing dialogue, a sharing and reading of stories. 

Cantilevered Bench | Phaedo

Each object we use is a storybook of the maker, be it clothes, art or frying pan. They each have had a hand attached, either by the creating, processing, packing or even, selling. This is a conversation, of creativity, touch and seeing. An engagement of words, only in the mind and deep in the body. Objects and how we live, resonates deep into our being, as do words, written and spoken, sifting and passing through the funneling mind. This is how we understand our world and our selves, through objects, spaces, people and words. 

Studio | Carl Barnett Design/Studio

Artist | Michele Oka Doner

Not Separate.

“We are of other people, some faraway and unknown.”

Untitled Drawing | Carl Barnett Design/Studio

We are of nature, not separate from. We are of the trees, the dirt, bugs and animals. We are of other people, some faraway and unknown. We have separated ourselves from this Earth, from each other, by self proclaimed hierarchy and self made machine, now run astray. Its not that we don’t know this, we’ve chosen not to see, what we don’t know won’t harm us, but in fact, it is. 

“This is what we know, what we can do. To start the ripple requires the throw.” 

To look away is no longer an option, if one’s concern is bigger than one’s self. To be aware and alter, if only in the micro, assists momentum, gathering energy from the current like minded. This is how movements build, fueled by all thats connected, by empathy, action and knowledge. We have the capabilities for change within us, we have autonomy and intellect, the humanity of emotion to gather the stones and face the future. This is what we know, what we can do. To start the ripple requires the throw. 

Seattle Residence with Bonsai Garden | Stuart Silk Architects

To affect change and the concerning future is to circumvent the government, digging and sifting for information as we build our own paths. It is not that we can’t find our way, there’s a plethora of paths before us, lit by the creative minds of many. We have our options, to see or to look away, to walk a path and be the light, or ignore intuition and let the ulcer grow. Our long ignored intuition has been telling, has tugged at our psyche for decades, now making its way through language and doing. This is what our humanity does, what our connection to all, will do. Whatever perception we take, is an action that affects the future, either negative or positive, for those within our circles, and those within theirs. It is not that we can’t, we’ve done great things in the past, it’s just a switch in mindset, to see who we are, our place within, and move forward with intention to change.

The future is always in the waiting, how we live now moves it just so. To move forward is to think forward, connecting with who we are and the world around. Time stops for no one, it cares less for our things and our ashes. Now has the biggest impact, the seed, the root, the bloom.

Floating Sculptural Tile | Kathryn Robinson-Millen