Carl Austin Hyatt is calling us “Westerners” to a paradigm shift.
Some might call it a dramatic point of departure for our culture. Others would call it an “it’s about time” movement. Whatever you choose to call it, Hyatt lives by it, feels it in his bones, believes in it. What is “it?” The connection to nature — that nature is alive, conscious, playful. But it’s more than that. Hyatt says nature speaks to him. Rocks speak to him. Even salt.
Hyatt recalled that when he was still in his teens, he began having “mystical” experiences in nature. These experiences came with a sense of deep conviction about certain realities/presences, Hyatt said. This was also the beginning of seeing the blind spots, indeed errors, he says, of our dominant technological, modern Western culture.
A longtime admirer of Thoreau, he longed for connection to place. He eventually found that on the seacoast of New Hampshire in the mid-1980s, when the coast was less developed and easily accessible. The magnificent, ledgy coastline beckoned.
Hyatt has had an impressive career with a long list of exhibitions and noteworthy venues that host his work in their permanent collections, including the Smithsonian Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Currier Museum of Art. Even Steven Spielberg has one in his private collection. And then there are the awards, featuring a MacDowell Fellowship, Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant (from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation) and New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship.
And yet there was more calling to him. His love of the rocks and ledges of the coast became more prevalent. A mission. Indeed, a calling. And serendipitously, one day on the streets of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Hyatt happened upon a friend whose excitement over her visit to Peru refocused his direction.
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