A group of works by Nathaniel Parsons that explores the relationships of people to the experiences they have with nature, real and imagined ,borrowed and seen. photos by John Casey (TY)

I take walks with people while we walk and talk I carve using the conversation to choose the motifs I develop in the carving, it is my hope that when the work is fully realized it will be given to the fellow walker as a memento. My work has consistently focused itself on how to have a poetic relationship to life. Finding stories from the headlines, front page back page, personal narratives, dreams and the artist’s connection to nature. I attempt to find ways of representing how meaning is made. A special focus is placed in creating work in situations where the image or object is found in a process of conversation with a viewer or visitor. This act of stripping away of personal authorship allows me to focus on the many choices of how something can be represented. Using this method of production reinforces a belief I have about the nature of art, and how an artwork when existing as a physical object becomes a souvenir of thought.

Exhibition of oil paintings and mixed media work.

April 1st -May 6th 2011

1 – 31 Jul 2010 | Alphonse Berber Gallery | Berkeley CA
Photographs by John Casey

Mobile artist studio.

2005 – present | Various Locations U.S.A.

2008

IT SEEMS TO ME EVERYTHING IS GETTING SMALLER 45

A YOUNG HISTORY OF FORGETTING 30

IN A CONTINUAL EFFORT TO REACH POINT SUBLIME 45

I THREW MY MIND INTO THE CIRCLE 32

ALWAYS NEVER IN A CONSTANT MOMENT OF LETTING GO 48

2006

Giving yourself to the possibility of learning from your actions.

First time, making a painting with a visitor during Twenty-five Cent Art Lessons.

A gentleman from Venezuela, a former boxer, his story without words comes out.

The connection made because of the offer, to listen, to record, how specific or complete does my knowledge need to be?

We draw a boat; it explains how he arrived to America.

Last year in Macedonia during Skopje Park Fun, I set myself up with the task of pulling people about the park aboard a boat on wheels.

The rope red and longer than needed afforded others to take up the slack, in spirit of want or need, people are heavy, and boats are heavy, visitors understood. Jana a friend helps connect my activity to a group of twelve boys, they’re Albanians, bright eyed ranging in ages of 10 to 15 the power structure obvious, sometimes brutal, boys will be boys.

Yet the activity they’re inclined to participate in is my pulling, I feel conflicted, making others do my job, but they want, they appear to need and thrive in entertaining others, a position I’ve maintained since an early age. I let go accepting a new role, occasionally attempting to correct their pulling when the riders seemed whip lashed by their exuberance.

2006 – present | Various Locations