Beauty Lends And Tames

“Beauty has the power to which brawn concedes:

liquifying to mush,

involuntarily, volunteering.”

It is within the sight of beauty that we are pulled: deep, deeper, closer and under. Drawn in by the innate, the innocent and even carnal. Our emotions are played upon if not preyed, as if we no longer have self control, our autonomy and breath stollen by the sight before us. Beauty seems to have strength over brawn and intelligence, pulling our senses and captivating: caging the wild beast and silencing the inner scream. Often its said that beauty tames the beast, but truly the beast is always willing. Beauty has the power to which brawn concedes: liquifying to mush, involuntarily, volunteering. 

“Beauty is as beauty shows, on its own accord.” 

Beauty has a way of softening the edges, disguising the lashing thorns, justifying the painful birth. The white dove is sacred as the black crow is feared, but both grace the wind, fly in wave like forms, nest their young. Beauty is as beauty shows, on its own accord. 

“Words attempt to describe what the eye sees,

and touch knows.”

The history of beauty has been documented in many forms and many mediums. Words attempt to describe what the eye sees, and touch knows. Beauty has been shown to have a sensual form and a threatening form, angled and con vexed, simplistic and shamefully ornate. It’s depicted as tall, short and squat, colorless and kaleidoscopic, wrecked and ruined, heavenly and inspired. It is said that it invites calamity as it draws peace, lightens the air, steals the energy from a room. If a man is too beautiful he may be seen as weak, a woman too beautiful is vexing, a threat. 

Beauty can be as thin as skin, deep as bone and piercing to the morrow. It can be overrated in the realms of art, and lost as natural born species. It can be in the eye of the lover and crushed in the hand of the ego. It comes and goes like fashion, steadfast as stone to water.

Beauty is as beauty lends itself to be. 

Creative Mind. Carnal Spark.

“I am interested in what the creative mind can do, how design and beauty opens up pathways of better thinking and living, as we navigate towards the future.” 

This time of physical distancing has me thinking about what I create and why, digging deeper to resolve my road blocks and find a clearer route forward. Though I am not certain if there is a better route, there are different choices that lead to different outcomes. I am interested in what the creative mind can do, how design and beauty opens up pathways of better thinking and living, as we navigate towards the future

“The creative mind allows us to see who we are, it is both spot light as it is illumination.”

It is through the creative mind that we see beauty in all its manifestations and contradictions, its consumptive qualities that pierces the eye as it does the center of our being. The creative mind allows us to see who we are, it is both spot light as it is illumination. It shows the way, bathes us in the knowledge of our being human, beautiful in our imperfections, ugly in our need to be perfect. It is the creative mind that builds the path as it lights the path, exposes our pain, teaches our lessons. 

It is painting that shows us who we are and architecture that allows us to feel our physical structure. Knowing ourselves through the built environment of created objects and created space. It is the culmination of all that we are funneled through creativity that speaks for and to us, through the universal language of beauty and the poetic word. The creative mind is instinctive tool of survival, carnal spark, gesture of love and hope. 

Designer Yves Béhar

Artist Michael Stipe

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

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

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.”

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.” 

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

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. 

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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.