"Flourish" Democracy or Hypocrisy. Book II of the Trilogy Renaissance: Healing the Great Divide - Barry Woods Johnston

Synopsis: Today, moderns have a limited understanding of core values. Many doubt truth exists, even if revealed by science. Our identity is overwhelmed by a dependency on mass means and methods. We inherently fear manipulation by mass influences but commonly perceive value judgments as dogmas and fanatical. While bombarded with commercial influences, personal values or moral beliefs are often shunned or ignored. The exact opposite occurred during the Renaissance. America, for a hundred and fifty years, ever since the Civil War, has avoided internal disaster while increasingly and naïvely perching on the precipice of the mounting national debt. So, as core values express our humanity and provide resilience, our art should imbue human warmth and foster inner strength and encourage stability. But any measure of truth must be consistent and durable, not propagated by mass commercial or political dogmas, but revealing insights, revelations, and rebirth, a renaissance, into the nature of truth.

Autobiography: 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 visualise 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.