Structure

It is the connection between emotion and object that we make sense of our world. Life and our participation within. Our homes and how we surround ourselves in these spaces helps to inform and transform our belief systems. It is an intimacy of inner and outer self. Nature and nurture. The relationship between the romantic wonderer and pragmatic gatherer. A fluid imbalance of who we are and desire.

Carl Barnett Design/Studio

It is often said that who we are in reality is how we think. Our routines, what we collect and our connections between others and nature speaks volumes as to how we see ourselves. Our lives are cabinets of curiosities, maps in chalk and story books. We add and subtract as necessary both in doctrine and action in search of meaning, compartmentalizing and shifting in our hierarchy of needs and wants. It is this movement, our building of our external world that we create our futures, that we create change. An interplay of choices and action.

Joseph Cornell “Unititled“ (Aviary With Yellow Birds)

The boxes we live within are the grids we expand upon. An ever changing structure of implied and actual walls. An interaction of nature, politics and the self in all its wonder and complexities. The flux of nature and the natural self. Life within our living, beauty and the disorientation reality sometimes brings.

Frank Lloyd Wright Falling Water

Life is not a fixed structure, though it may seem as though especially within our cities, our gridded and stacked patterns, separating nature from the natural self. A counter intuitive built environment. It is our creative mind that can unfix the seemingly fixed, stretching and morphing our ways of life. How we live today can be the testament of our tomorrows, this is in how we see beauty and its opposite. How we teardown and rebuild, unfurling the future of possibility.

Carl Barnett Design/Studio

CB 09/23/18

Meaningful Minimal

I am in constant pursuit of the meaningful minimal. A sifting for the calm within this era of chaos. It is this search that I hope to find a truer and essential way of life that captures and facilitates a better way of living or perhaps a clearer way of living. A space that allows us to counter our everyday, to reflect, think and enjoy rather than distract and purely entertain.

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“The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen.” ~Rumi

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This approach is a culmination of space, art, time and emotion. A layering. It is also the addition of politics and nature as these too are a part of who we are. Not separate from but encircled within. To dwell within the meaningful minimal is not to run from our struggles in life but to see them more clearly and hopefully break them down into smaller parts.

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“If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness.” ~Tadao Ando

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It is through the built environment and personal drive that we can achieve, regardless of what achieve personally means. It is my strong belief that we can overcome our current struggles as many of them we have created. Through desire, will, the creative mind and the clarity of personal space can we move through our current challenges.

To stop and see what is around us in a clearer way can we see the way. Not as spiritual enlightenment but as matter of fact, a matter of seeking and doing. We are surrounded by a world of beauty, wonder and great achievement and simplification can be a way to better see the world. Life is difficult enough, why add more.

CB 09/18/18

Creativity and will

How we live is both mirror and window, reassurance and nourishment. It tells us who we are and sheds light onto where we wish to go. Story teller and flashlight. 

This I believe is why we bond to the physical object. Our need for assurance, a grounding in our uncertain and fleeting life. The tactile physicality that says yes, I concur and validates. Manifested from the emotional and mental, connecting inside with outside. An equilibrium that grounds our footing, ankers as boat at sea.

It is creativity that will save us, the visual arenas as well as the spoken and written word. If we are to build a better future and world and I believe we can as we have built what we currently see, it is these arenas that we are dependent upon. It is creativity that taps into and tugs at our inner selves, the selves we cannot or more truthfully wish not to see. It fulfills desire and inspires change. Pushes, pulls and prods.

In contrast, it is technology that we need to pay closer attention to in how we live. Though technology is bringing in positive advancement, its down side is that we are losing personal connection to each other, affecting our physical and mental well being. Our black screens act as windows to the world but too are barriers to the very world we seek to explore. Both tunnel and wall, it is counter intuitive, limiting emotion and physicality. Our very essence.

To move forward through this troubling era we need to look backward and inward to who we are. Who we are to ourselves and to others. To our faults, hopes and even better, our will. It is through creative will that change comes. Through built environment and extended hand. Past the I, to the we. Through creative action and will as noun.

CB 09/14/18

A Tool. A Bridge. A Spring Board.

It is I believe the intention of interior design to inspire better living, this is not a revolutionary thought, it is however one that does not get fully discussed in the context of our current world and troubled era of politics. 

From my perception interior design is a catalyst tool, one that is an intricate part in the built environment. It is tool, bridge and spring board that is both utilitarian and emotionally inspiring. 

I no longer have the patience to defend my belief system. I believe strongly in what I do. The why before the what is my stedfast manifesto. We do not have the luxury of time to discuss the relevancy of design, architecture or art. We are at a point of do or do not. Make a difference, create change or hope for the best. Hope and change is a noble thought, but actions speak loudest. No matter the scale, it is intention that speaks.

All creativity has the inherent power to affect change, even in the slightest. A step forward is a step forward. But it is the acknowledgment of this power that propels it upward as fireworks and voices in the dark. 

We are, all of us within this circle of influence. A circle of affect and effected. The built environment is created by the act of doing, the process of manifesting an idea. The hammer to the nail. 

This is not only a matter of speaking to it, but getting to it. Time and change. 

CB 08/10/18

Beauty (,)

There is much to the discussion of beauty. It's a complex subject that reflects the individual, shedding light beyond thorn and rose into YIng and Yang and the beautiful ugly.

Beauty has a provocative side that delves within our engagement to reality, asks us to question what we know of it and our perception of life. It's a complexity much like our view to the universe, unfolding and exposing us to our own personal truths of birth and decay. Purpose and meaning.

This is an expansive subject. Not beauty (.), but beauty (,). How beauty inspires beyond itself, eliciting wonder and emotion. Past the history of us and the making of its name. Beauty elevates and mimics life, celebrats and acts as memento mori. A book of words, book of pages. 

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Beauty, I stand before you.

Humbled.

I ask to unravel the complexities.

Troubled.

Life as I know it seems ugly.

Insight.

Allow me to see you deeper.