Arlene Nesbitt

Arlene Nesbitt has been a witness and a participant in human regeneration through her work with art as therapy. ‘People who have become social misfits, outcasts, can find and express beyond words their true nature as separate from their outward appearance and behavior. This can be a 4 stage process of growth, transformation and evolution starting from the old or lizard brain’s concern about survival and making judgements based on fear. Night on the Iguana represents the frightening, strange world we might experience when our life is out of kilter.
 

The next step on the path is developing and acting with conscience, outside the 'shoulds' and 'should nots' our culture dictates. In a series called Refuse Illusion the old values of the throw-away society
are questioned. Lighting up, magnifying and photographing glass fragments, skins and plastic refuse from a prosthetics oven images are created such as The Sky is Falling, Melting Icescape and Inner Room.
Then we move into consciousness, sometimes awakening from a bright spark as the little waif in Transformation. As we become aware, there is a possibility to evolve spiritually, to realize the ‘oneness of all,’ Sri Aurobindo. A photo montage of batik wax scrapings, Infinity represents the energy we have in common with everything and everyone from the miniscule to the cosmic.’

Click on any image to initiate a slideshow of the work.



Regenerartion was curated by Victoria artist Arlene Nesbitt, whose digitally mixed-media work has been shown in Scotland and BC in group, solo and juried shows.

arlene@amnart.ca
www.amnart.ca

Arlene Nesbitt, Icescape, a photo of vegetable peelings in ice reflecting both hope and despair about the melting of the icecaps and the bubbles of regeneration.

Drowning in reflection
naming the giver of every gift
an inventory of precious things
some, tokens of self-love
Landfill - unless someone
lingers long enough
to be amused, charmed or enlightened...
precious things.
Shedding the concrete,
exoskeletal, binding portrait frame,
constructed precious things,
concrete personality,
Squeezing out of it
preciousness sticks and snags a little
on the limbs -
climbing apparatus.
Ascension begins.

Poem by Lindsay Beal. Lindsay Beal works through the arts with people who have mental illness, head injury and
those who are incarcerated. www.spiderseye.ca