SEED: First of the Trilogy Renaissance: Healing the Great Divide

By Barry Woods Johnston

The Seed journeys into the deepest heart and soul of one artist facing the massive paranoia of injustice, economic free-fall, unimaginable chaos, and unsurvivable global war. New towers of Babel eclipse the culture and spirituality of the everyday everyman into depravity and dysfunction. But like his colossal Shakespearean portraits poised on th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lime Press LLC
• Release date: Dec 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781954304178

Barry Woods Johnston

After graduating in architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and National Academy of Design, and serving in Vietnam in 1968 as a Combat Artist, I pursued European methods of art and architecture, living in Florence, Italy, between 1970 and 1972 and in Pietrasanta, Italy, at the Tommasi Foundry between 1985 to 1988. I established a studio in Washington, D.C. for seventeen years, and finally settled into my present studio in Baltimore, MD. As a practicing sculptor for over fifty years and an architectural designer, my primary focus has been on humanity. My sculptures are light and lively while complimenting their architectural setting. I seek to visualize fundamental emotions in three dimensions and breathe life into them. While adding levity, movement, and humanity, my designs are derived from abstract forms symbolically embodying the overall vision. I break down my sculptural visions into the most fundamental abstract shapes - circles, triangles, and squares, allowing those images to emerge as found in nature. I then integrate that abstraction into a realistic statement, seeking to stir universal feelings in others.

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Seed

First of the Trilogy

RENAISSANCE:

HEALING THE GREAT DIVIDE

Barry Woods Johnston

Seed: First of the Trilogy: Renaissance: Healing the Great Divide

by Barry Woods Johnston

This book is written to provide information and motivation to readers. Its purpose isn’t to render any type of psychological, legal, or professional advice of any kind. The content is the sole opinion and expression of the author, and not necessarily that of the publisher.

Copyright © 2020 by Barry Woods Johnston

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form by any means, including, but not limited to, recording, photocopying, or taking screenshots of parts of the book, without prior written permission from the author or the publisher. Brief quotations for noncommercial purposes, such as book reviews, permitted by Fair Use of the U.S. Copyright Law, are allowed without written permissions, as long as such quotations do not cause damage to the book’s commercial value. For permissions, write to the publisher, whose address is stated below.

ISBN: 978-1-954304-18-5 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-954304-19-2 (Hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-954304-17-8 (E-book)

Printed in the United States of America.

Published by Lime Press LLC

425 West Washington Street Suite 4

Suffolk, VA 23434 US

https://www.lime-press.com/

A Review

As I turned the pages and began reading this odyssey of Barry Johnston, as a veteran and artist, my interest increased, and I was pleased that I had agreed to review it. ‘Seed: First of the Trilogy: Renaissance: Healing the Great Divide’ is not a book of fiction, nor a novel but an autobiography of a modern renaissance man, but a man no less, with all his foibles, his successes, failures, fears, and frustrations laid out with surgical precision in the cold reality of life’s twists and turns. Viet Nam leaves an open wound Barry struggles to understand. He is empathic to the wrongs inflicted on the innocent whether from war or life itself. His nature is sculpting figurative art imbued with his concerns for humanity. He joins a religious art colony in the Swiss Alps known as L’Abri where Barry argues with the founder Francis Schaefer over interpretations of the Scriptures and wrestles with his own spirit over the contradictions. Never at peace, he’s at odds with the commercial art establishment for commissions, and he reflects on failed marriages after a near heart attack he barely survives. Barry reveals himself with honesty and a humanity which make this a compelling biography and a historical account of a representational artist, veteran and inventor.

Daniel Shea

Veterans for Peace

Artist and Human Rights Activist

The author, in telling his story, sought to be as truthful as humanly possible. However, admittedly the information herein represents his own perspective; If others have a different slant, let them write their own insights. To protect those who may be innocent, some names have been changed.

An Acknowledgement

In creating Seed, I want to thank those special individuals who stepped into my creative process, like my sister, Elizabeth Johnston, who helped gather some of the material, edited and provided support; my mother, Lucile Johnston, who contributed many hours gathering and editing material about the family; Daniel Shea, Board of Directors of ‘Veterans for Peace,’ for his valuable comments and moral support; and Oswald Copeland, a professional critic and writer, who, although I can’t say always agreed with my efforts, gave astute and forthright feedback that was immensely helpful. Also, I wish to very strongly thank Dr. Ruth Margraff for reading, editing and commenting on my book. Her editorial skills and in-depth knowledge of the subject, as a professor of creative writing at the Chicago Institute of Art and as the daughter of a minister, made a huge difference in the quality of the final product. Finally, I wish to heartily thank my long- lost lady friend, Kinga Revesz, who I met forty-eight years ago in the Bruegel exhibit of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria, but who, because she was then behind the Iron Curtain, our relationship was only allowed to resume forty-five years later. Her structural suggestions were invaluable. To all, I am deeply grateful.

The Cover

The cover is a fusion of the sculptures Global Madness and The Mandala. Global Madness was created in 1988 in bronze, is 35 x 64, and like Picasso’s Querica, depicts the destruction of innocence resulting from the utter mindlessness and inhumanity of war. Mandala was created in 1975 in bronze 50" high and is described extensively in the coming pages.

In Memory of

Ho Chi Minh’s letters to President Truman, appealing for Vietnam independence, were put into a filling cabinet and forgotten. Truman never saw them. Thus, over 200 thousand U.S. soldiers died in the Vietnam War or committed suicide afterward. This book acknowledges their memory and gives homage to the millions of North and South Vietnamese who were seeking national independence.

Dedicated to the artist’s mother Lucile who dearly loved the Holy Scriptures

If one day represents the existence of our planet, Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. – Bill Bryson

We have every right to stand up and resist extinction.

Contents

A Review

An Acknowledgement

The Cover

In Memory of

Foreword

Prologue

The Trilogy

I. Seed

1. No Space for the Soul

2. The Family Closet

3. The Difficulty of Merely Being

4. Daydreaming as a Way of Coping with Conflict

5. Wake Up! Wake Up!

6. Persisting, Regardless

7. Time for a Change

8. Preparing for the Leap

9. Fleshing Out Anew

10. Light and Anecdotal Wisdom

11. Stepping into It

12. Destroying a Culture

13. Homecoming

14. Art, the Mirror, What’s Next?

15. Continuing Creation – Harmonies and Rhythms

16. Who’s Really in Charge Anyway?

Table of Images

1. Mandala

2. Layers of the Trilogy

3. Four Apocalyptic Horses, conceived 16 years before 9/11

4. A Calm Place (marble)

5. Mother and Child (Marble)

6. Dolphin Boys

7. Future Prince – Portrait of Jim Henson

8. Pool Party

9. Abe and the Bully Boys

10. Chaos

11. Star of David and the Trinity

12. The Vesica Piscis Connection between Equilaterals

13. Three Squares, Four Triangles, The Circle

14. Geometric Designs by Barry Johnston

15. The Carlos Bergonzi Award

16. Dr. Soltau

17. Bob Reich

18. Mary Odynaic

19. Wendall Margrave

20. Nude

21. Marylou

22. Marina

23. Gloria

24. Temperance

25. Crucifixion

26. Family

27. Caution, School Crossing

28. Done

29. A Gift

30. A Good Scrub

31. Thuong Duc

32. The String-Pulling Bureaucrat with His Red Tape

33. Vigilance

34. Rat Race Clock

Foreword

by

Prof. Ruth Margraff

Barry Woods Johnston makes art that redefines what it means to be fully human. His subjects seem poised between centuries past and future, yet they bristle with tremulous, monumental and civic presence. The scale of his work feels colossal even when miniature. This book is a memoir of Johnston’s life-long quest for enlightenment and a retrospective of the thoughts and muses behind his collected lifeworks.

Johnston strikes back at the great amassing of lethal technologies, the techno-materialism, and institutionalized bureaucracies that threaten our future. He approaches this quest very much like chiseling away the flakes of monolithic religious dogma from the lesson of Jesus’s humanity. He sees Jesus as a revolutionary who opposed the inhumanity of church and state, temple and Roman Empire. Johnston’s Wedlock according to art critic Steve Mirabella, when unveiled, exuded a soaring physical perfection and weightless grace. His Faust was made deeply personal, curled in grief, at the profound moment of his damnation, alone. American Arts Quarterly describes the excellence of his surfaces and forms as rooted in his ability to connect with something deeply personal in so many different people that sets him apart from other sculptors.

Johnston critiques the movements in much contemporary art as flat and aloof, resembling the art of the Dark Ages in a political system controlled by oligarchs, not unlike the Soviet Union under Communism or the Medieval Roman Catholic Church leading up to the Inquisition. He sees these movements as reflecting the potential for mass manipulation and oligarchical oppression. The markets pressured artists to make art that could easily be mass-produced. Collectors avoided values that implied personal obligation. But Johnston has resisted such vogue art markets deeply embroiled in the conglomerate and complacently impersonal all his life. He awakens us to the timeless human value, civic duty and individual initiative of making art. He demands a new age of enlightenment, a return to nature and the nature of being fully human. This is not just about being free, although freedom is part of it, but being responsible.

Johnston, in appreciating the individual potential of each of us as human beings, is beckoning a return to constitutional principles. All humanity is art-worthy. He examines the state of his own mind, how it developed, and debates his civic culpability to the synergism necessary for basic democracy. He critiques the nature of his own reason and creativity in his honest pursuit of happiness within the human values of his art. He yearns for a new creed of tolerance, citing Thomas Jefferson: The only thing we can not tolerate is intolerance. He searches for checks and balances as foundational stimuli for his own life and liberties, believing, like the founding fathers, that through open debate, reason might prevail. Johnston draws inspiration from periods of democratic enlightenment in which artists have thrived such as in Ancient Greece, Renaissance Florence, Enlightened Paris, or America’s Golden Age of Democracy. He sees internal social resilience as enhanced by the shared values of artists. He ponders the United States Constitution as an extraordinary political system designed to promote both personal and collective potential. But just as slavery and bigotry once plagued its implementation, Johnston notes the ubiquitous corporate ideology of transactional mass production. Hyper-real hyperboles of reality programmed propaganda, especially since WWII, have led America to assume the role of Free World leader of a dehumanizing capitalist empire. This amassing has weakened constitutional checks and balances, that once allowed reason to prevail and pursuits of happiness to flourish. Obsession with abundant mediocrity has overpowered common sense and the artistic visionary insights of each unique individual.

Seed journeys into the deepest heart and soul of one artist facing the massive paranoia of injustice, economic free-fall, unimaginable chaos and unsurvivable global war. New towers of Babel eclipse the culture and spirituality of the everyday everyman into depravity and dysfunction. But like his colossal Shakespearean portraits poised on the precipice of cataclysmic conquest, the towers crumble in Johnston’s modest belief that truth and justice will prevail. By giving his subjects the dignity of art, Johnston advocates for the clarity and wonder of hand-tooled sculpture, the timeless industry of a master artist working in his studio by hand, on a human scale. He sows within himself and his spectators a yearning for the universal human value of labor, the work of art, the dignity of labor and labor as art.

Seed is an appeal for an intimate infinity of art within the vastness of one mind, one soul. Against massive impersonal markets, where money correlates with power and profanity, and greed-driven ambition for profit overrides basic human decency, Johnston’s art breathes modest yet miraculous spirit of invention. Johnston’s era is rooted in a new hope that holds a deep respect for the commonality and distinctions between all servants and sources of life, truth and beauty.

Prologue

by

Barry Woods Johnston

Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s lonely nut that held its ground. While living in D.C., I often camped out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. On top of those ancient mountains grew an oak, overlooking the Shenandoah Valley, that was desperately rooted and intertwined amidst a bed of large boulders. In its captivity, this tree, while struggling to survive, surrounded by scenic beauty, developed gnarling limbs that took the shape of its gnarling roots, entrapped among the massive, unforgiving stone crevices and boulders. The oak grew to become a defiant testament to the force of life itself. It became a reminder of the struggles imposed by life; a reminder that an artist’s task, amidst a field of beauty, is to define solid values and principles; a reminder that, if necessary, sacrifices are required to address the hard issues. A healthy tree depends on quality soil, an abundance of sun, water, and air, just as a healthy individual grows out of the support of a caring family and community. Obstacles shape our character and build strength. An artist matures not by seeking to be different but by passionately working through the confusion to define what is worthwhile.

And what of the acorn? Jesus, when asked to describe heaven, likened it to a mustard seed, which a man stood and cast into a garden in his field; and it grew and waxed a great tree, and the birds of the air lodged in the branches thereof, in the shadow of it. In 1971, a sculpture evolved that expresses my core perception of life. Like the Blue Ridge oak, the sculpture takes the form of a mushroom cloud. Called Mandala, (see image 1) a word originating in ancient Sanskrit, means a circular motif surrounding a central figure usually used for religious adoration. Although inspired by a number of diverse influences, primarily it metaphysically interprets Einstein’s formula for his Theory of Relativity in human terms, E = mC², whereas Elohim is (E), the ancient Hebrew term for judgmental God, is seen as equal (=) to mass (m) (matter, material, or mankind) times the Christ (C), the light of the world squared, both in death and resurrection. Facing on one side is a figure of Christ reaching out to His believers. On the opposite is the Christ crucified. The two figures, back to back, represent a transferal of energy, both hovering over the crushed heads of serpents, with a celebrating host above. Having newly arrived in the States, I created this sculpture while dealing with my landlord, an Army General’s widow, request that I deal with my nervous condition by undergoing shock treatments. Her brother, the head of the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was prepared to execute her request. The Mandala was my answer.

1. Mandala

Why should we be nervous? Seed was written to enlighten and provide perspective for myself and others as to where we now stand in history. The Italian Renaissance resulted from the suffering caused by the Black Plague, which killed off about half of Europe. This horrible human crisis forced Europeans to seek more substantive values, then providing the backbone and inward resilience of the Renaissance. The Crusaders brought this tragedy to Europe, but also, they brought three other positive influences – the high mathematics of the Muslim world, the teachings of Socrates and Plato, and the lessons of the Greco-Roman world. Also, a fourth inherent influence dominated Europe, the lessons taught in the Old Testament and the New concerning the life of Jesus. The stories about Jesus were personal and full of humanity. Although much of the art commissioned was based on the same subject matter, Renaissance artists were free to express these insights as they affected their individual lives. Because of these influences, artists and scientists had a clear sense of purpose and identity. Their inner resilience enabled them to hold off military attacks from the Moorish Empire and remain stable while dealing with the many French invasions.

Today, we moderns have a limited understanding of core values. In fact, most of us do not even believe in core values at all, nor do we believe that truth exists other than that revealed by science. Because of our dependency on mass means and methods, we inherently fear being manipulated by mass influences. The common belief is: that value judgments are dogmas and thus fanatical. Therefore, our art today expresses either endless pragmatic assertions or no assertions at all. Although we are continually bombarded with commercial influences, personal values or beliefs are generally shunned or ignored. This is the exact opposite of what occurred during the Renaissance. Americans have avoided internal disaster for a hundred and fifty years, ever since the Civil War. We have indulged ourselves while avoiding core values. Although we naïvely perch on the precipice of the mounting debt, which threatens to cascade civilization into endless chaos and potential oblivion, we rally around our immediate prosperity. Core values express our humanity. An art imbued with humanity has strength and inner resilience. Such inner strength improves our chances of survival. However, our core values must be personal, not propagated by mass commercial or political dogmas. They must come from personal revelations and insights gained in our personal pursuit into the nature of truth.

The Mandala (see image 1) also much resembles the Chinese Thousand Layered Ball shown to me by a monk at the Fiesole Archeological Museum. This ball, made up of numerous concentric layers, symbolizes an odyssey through the many layers of the mind to the core of our identity. Although written as an autobiography, Seed both voyages into the inner world of the psyche and looks at the underpinning influences that define our society and economy. This is not a book on how to become a market success, but one artist’s struggle to make sense of his times, about striving to bridge the gap between reality and possibility, about what it takes to be an artist. As our times become enveloped by the monolithic influence of Modernism, as our values are set adrift, this book looks through the eyes of an artist at the radical transition that has occurred in our recent history, at what I, as one artist, consider essential and inspiring. To fully understand our recent past, let us consider the broad spectrum of influences that have shaped the evolution of civilization! In hopes of redirecting our priorities toward sounder alternatives, in hopes of your realizing your potential, hopefully, this story will elicit insights in you that will help you face and overcome the negative influences eroding your inner potential and quality of life, so we can all benefit from your growth as we move into the future.

Developing ideas is not enough. We need workable values and insights that will address and serve the greater good. According to Socrates, the most fundamental virtue is serving our fellow man. The depth of our character naturally sets us apart from the trends and whims of the impersonal influences of our technocratic world. In transcending the negativity, we place our feet firmly on solid bedrock, in a space where we can be most human and can best realize our inner potential and help others to do the same. Survival depends on making ourselves useful. As our goals address the vital issues, our purpose becomes equally vital. But, as one friend once put it, Cemeteries are full of people who the world cannot do without, meaning working ourselves to death does not make us indispensable. Working for the greater good means being a compassionate human.

Throughout history, periods of enlightenment have led to a flourishing of the arts and sciences, and with it, to cultural and economic prosperity. Significant periods of growth in civilization have spurred the humble efforts of inspired individuals. New growth will not emerge as another ‘ism.’ Growth will come from a renewed commitment to our free- enterprise system, and to positive vision based on sound principles and values that enhance our humanity. In pursuit of the greater good, our understanding and appreciation of the harmonies and interrelationships that give an order to the Universe help deepen our sense of humanity. Such perception of this order must be personal and internalized, not imposed by some utopian oligarch. Art, music, and theater help define the woven fabric of our identity and build interpersonal relationships. Within the diversity of our lives, universal harmonies resonate against a sounding board of natural laws and common sense. Human principles are built on values, integrity, and compassion that, if formed in art, resonate as expressions of a culture. Each intertwining facet, each painful step brings us closer together as a people, closer to knowing the true nature of life itself.

Seed is a voyage, not an arrival. It is a struggle to break through the pragmatic influences of Modernism and the chaos of those popular segments of our society that seem bent on self-destruction and arrive at a point of inner freedom and tranquility. It’s a struggle to find appropriate expressions and define courses of action that will address the elusive confusion of the heart. As you read this book, my wish is you’ll embrace your difficulties, as I have in recognizing that the trials herein revealed have been carefully tailored to shape this artist into a productive seed. The ordeals have blazed a path within me, leading me to a more in-depth and broader level of self-understanding and empathy for others. They have obliged me to embrace insights into those harmonies that give life meaning, that provide inner peace and allow our culture to flourish. Out of my own faith in that unseen order, I have grown as an artist and human being. But, as you shall see, this artist, for one, was a slow learner.

The Trilogy

This three-book trilogy seeks to establish enduring values that will strengthen our sense of humanity. The trilogy’s narrative unfolds in three parts: First, this book, Seed, applies a Jungian approach to uncover the disparaging influences of my youth that once blocked my potential so to encourage the reader to do the same. The second book takes the reader on a journey into the lives of many inspiring artists who have spurred a flourishing of Western civilization while comparing the creative period of the Italian Renaissance with our own times, in hopes of providing a clearer understanding of what has driven meaningful periods of enlightenment. The reader is encouraged to look at those universal qualities in human nature that will help us realize our inner potential. The second book transitions into the English Renaissance and Shakespeare and looks through his eyes at our modern times. The third book of the trilogy illuminates the confusion in my life, as one artist, in this brave new world, as I reverse my psychological journey and transition out of self-absorption, as taught by Carl Jung, countering the narcissism of self-reflection by journeying outward, as taught by the biblical Job. The quest seeks to dispel those influences that stand in the way of our becoming more fully human and compassionate toward others.

2. Layers of the Trilogy

PART I

Seed

Chapter 1

No Space for the Soul

God has written the World’s greatest comedy, and no one is laughing.

-Voltaire

Fate takes a spin. While lying prostrate on a hospital transport, awaiting transfer into the operating room, my brothers in faith — Joe Farr, Eli Fass, and Bill Dadd — lean over me in prayer. They arrived earlier that morning to see me through the surgery. Still, a bit shook yet resigned to what’s ahead, I concede with trepidation, I’ve been blessed. I’ve had a good life. The anesthesiologist finishes checking my vitals. The heart rate is stable. Outside in the waiting room, our pastor sits with my wife, Soony, who had left me a month earlier, only to return after learning of my condition. The operation requires the doctors to open my chest, stop my heart, allowing me to die momentarily, before bridging my vascular system to a mechanical pump. This triple bypass requires the surgeon to suture three veins serving the outer muscles of the heart, opening up the fresh flow of blood to the core of my circulatory system.

My grandfather, at fifty-one, while struggling to carry his family through the Great Depression, died of a heart attack. My father, at 65, suffered and died of a massive heart attack while visiting me in Washington. For the past two years, I thought I had heartburn. Recently seized with leg cramps, I mentally worked my way through the pain, astonished as to how the excruciating attacks disappeared as rapidly as they came. Even two weeks ago, I had no idea I had a problem, Eli and I took a four-mile walk through a local park. Up the big hill, I nearly passed out, assuming a collapse would have been a heart attack. After a pause, we crest the precipice just as a storm kicked up, forcing us to take shelter under the covered porch of the Outward-Bound Headquarters. The reprieve gave me relief enough to finish the remaining mile. Even just four days ago, in the middle of a tennis match, was I overcome with exhaustion. Apparently, every day for the past two years was playing Russian roulette. Only a stress test revealed the condition. At 66, with one large vein nearly 100% blocked and two at 75%, a reckoning was at hand. Given my genetic propensity and denial, one doctor tells me, Obviously, God has some further purpose for you.

Ten years earlier, my Mom faced a similar surgery. The night before, she confided to me, Just between you and me, I don’t think I’ll make it.

Not to worry, I reassured her. You’ll be just fine.

In her trip down the corridor to the operation room, she waved back a cheerful goodbye, Don’t worry about me. I’ve had a wonderful life. It’s been a great ride.

When she woke the next morning, I looked down to greet her and said, Mother, this is not heaven. Her response, I stand corrected.

Now again, all feels deja vu. Time is our most precious gift. If managed with anxiety, the stress can kill us. But time wasted is time gone forever. With this operation, there’s good reason to believe all will go well. Dr. Secarus, the head of Cardiology at Sinai Hospital, is confident of a good outcome. A native of British Guiana, he’s the last surgeon on his team to hand stitch sutures, connecting and bypassing the tiny arteries. In any case, I feel relatively relaxed as I’m transferred to an operating table, the anesthesia takes effect, and I fade. In passing into a deep sleep, an image of an ancient beige ivory sphere consumes my brain. This sphere represents the layers of the subconscious, reaching past 25 layers to arrive at its core, each layer representing an implosion of influences that shape our lives. Yet, it is I who chooses to define myself by my response to the influences around me. Held in the clutches of unsympathetic forces that impose their influences, good and bad — on the one hand, we are inundated by the abrasive negative karmic influences generated by our obsessive materialism. On the other, modern medicine now works a miracle on me, healing my heart. Now modern technologies, that can seem so harsh, are working to save my life.

My story really began when I arrived in Florence, Italy, aspiring as an artist thirty-seven years earlier. In those days, a considerable urgency was pressing me to find a way to settle in as an artist. The real wake-up came while visiting Fiesole, outside of Florence, featuring one of Europe’s oldest archaeological treasures. On that sunny day, a day in spring, in the year 1970, to the side of the central plaza in that ancient town of Fiesole, I ascend a long stairway leading up to an old Franciscan monastery, now converted into an Asian museum. This Renaissance building, although lying in the heart of one of Italy’s oldest Etruscan ruins, a birthplace of Ancient Western Rome, strangely houses one of the finest collections of Oriental art in Europe.

The museum doors swing open, and a jovial monk offers me a tour through his domain of ancient treasures. After walking through the halls of tapestries, porcelain urns, and bronze figurines, the monk leads me to a particular display case facing the sunny side of the main gallery. Pulling out a key, he directs his wide-eyed visitor to close his eyes and put out his hand. A panel door slides open, and I listen as the monk rummages through his mysterious cache. Still, eyes shut, suddenly I feel a