Beauty and Nature

February 28, 2022 Carl Barnett

“Beauty and nature are the counters to our contemporary ills.”

**NOURISH Gallery** **| Kathryn Robinson-Millen**

Beauty and nature are the counters to our contemporary ills. They mirror who we are, inspiring better living, resolve, and hope through the creative mind and the action of will. It is through beauty and nature that our minds and bodies are put to ease, allowing intuition to be heard and curiosity explored, expanding possibility in the present moment, and hurling future.

Within the ceramic work of Kathryn Robinson-Millen, is the exploration of form and utility, how the vessel is to be used and enjoyed through arranging of natural materials. The joy of beauty, form, and physical engagement. Kathryn’s architectural-inspired forms are contrasts of angles and painterly gestures. They are not merely utilitarian, but function to inspire engagement of the eye, hand, and emotion.

Beauty And How We live

February 24, 2022 Carl Barnett

“We are, in our intentions to move forward, heroic, extending an empathetic hand and knowing ear.”

If we’ve learned anything from this pandemic, it’s our need for substance and purpose: love, beauty, and joy. The importance of how we live and knowing who we are. It’s been a telling time, one of loss, mental strain, and questioning who we are, and where we wish to go in our lives. Words lack the ability to express true emotion as we attempt to discuss this troubling era, and the words we read seem massive on the pages we dare to read. We are, in our intentions to move forward, heroic, extending an empathetic hand and knowing ear.

**NOURISH Gallery** **| SENTIENT | Kathryn Robinson-Millen | Carl Barnett | Gaia Starr**

“Beauty and nature are intrinsic to who we are, our intuitive selves born from the stars, roots, and water.”

**NOURISH Gallery** **| Liadain Warwick Smith | Laura Kastin | Carl Barnett**

Here, beauty may seem contrary, but in fact, a necessary salve that speaks to our needs, transcending sorrow, fear, and doubt. It allows us to settle into the comfort of who we are, what we know to be true and everlasting. Beauty and nature are intrinsic to who we are, our intuitive selves born from the stars, roots, and water. It is beauty, no matter how one sees it, that pierces the eye and mirrors the self, soothing if not for a moment, the body and the mind. It is beauty that reminds us who we are, and what we can achieve if we pause, just for a moment, and see within and around us.

What beauty does is why we collect and even create, it is the universal language that binds all cultures and transcends time, going back before language defined what beauty is, and is not.

**NOURISH Gallery** **| Laura Kastin | Liadain Warwick Smith | Carl Barnett | Gaia Starr**

Walking Each Other Home

February 20, 2022 Carl Barnett

‘We are, as Ram Dass wrote, “walking each other home.”

This pandemic has given us an opportunity, to sit, stay and explore who we are, where we are. To view ourselves in a new light and shine that light forward, inspired by a deeper way of being, supporting ourselves as we support others. We are an imperfect species, but it’s not about being perfect, it’s about equanimity: building the ship, as it sails. We are intrinsic to beauty and the ugly, knowing who we are, our capabilities, eases our living and those we encounter along the way. We are, as Ram Dass wrote, “walking each other home.”

**NOURISH Gallery** *| Laura Kastin | SENTIENT | Liadain Warwick Smith*

“The world is complex because we are complex, the Earth is ill because we are. To potentially better our world starts with ourselves, peeling the onion’s storied pages.”

**NOURISH Gallery** **| Gaia Starr | Kathryn Robinson-Millen | Liadain Warwick Smith**

To live one’s life is no easy task, navigating the minefield of the self and contemporary life. The world is complex because we are complex, the Earth is ill because we are. To potentially better our world starts with ourselves, peeling the onion’s storied pages. Beauty has its ugly side, we know it as we know ourselves, we can hide but not from the eye that looks within. We create, destroy and begin again daily, as we navigate the path we are building. We are the reflection of the energy we came from, and the world we continue to create. The question in life is not can we, but how, the why before the what.

Beauty is what we are born into and come from, felt in the hand, chest, and heart. This is who we are, our shared experience, void of the differences we have created. If we learn nothing else from this era, let us learn who we are, as we walk each other home.

There Is Beauty Around Us

February 15, 2022 Carl Barnett

“There is beauty around us that’s inspiring, the people, the things we collect, the words we read aloud or alone. This will always be, our constant, the narrow bridge forward, our genetic drive to persevere: love, will, and hope.”

Sense Making

February 13, 2022 Carl Barnett

“We cling to the physical world as a means to ease the untamable mind: the capricious self, made of energy.”

How is it that we can love an object almost as much as we love another person, cherishing the light the object brings. We are innate collectors and creators, sense makers of the world within and around us, building futures as we untether from the past. We cling to the physical world as a means to ease the untamable mind: the capricious self, made of energy.

**NOURISH Gallery** **| Liadain Warwick Smith | SENTIENT**

“The physical world of things is a mirror to our ways of thinking, sense-making, and our drive to persevere.”

It is not misguided to say that we are attached to the things we collect, as they speak deeply to who we are, giving rise to sensations that dwell deep within. They are extensions to our identity, physical evidence of who we think we are and wish to become. They hold our memories, stir sensations that tell us we’re alive, living in a world of beauty and the ugly. The physical world of things is a mirror to our ways of thinking, sense-making, and our drive to persevere.

NOURISH Gallery | SENTIENT | Liadain Warwick Smith | Kathryn Robinson-Millen | Carl Barnett

We are romantics, pragmatic hopefuls, each with the potential for good and bad. As we create our world, we create ourselves, from the beauty of who we are, and are not.