Samantha Barnes. Actress. Model.
About Samantha Barnes
Girl meets city; she blossoms.
I grew up on a remote island town in the Tongass National Rainforest, in Ketchikan, Alaska, population ~8,000. With so few distractions, I threw myself into a love of the outdoors and of performance arts at a young age. Ballet & Jazz Dancing, Theater and Costume Design became my life. For such a small town there were incredible outlets for all of the above, even one in all: Ketchikan's Annual Wearable Art Show, a runway fashion show by and for locals. Have you ever seen a complete samurai suit of armor made of Kodak film canisters? I sure have and it inspired the hell out of me. Next year I crocheted my first dress, which can be viewed on my etsy page:
In Highschool I did a year-long youth exchange to Germany with Congress-Bundestag, a prestigious scholarship based program, where I was blessed to become more exposed to the world and it's different people, while also picking up a second language. After graduation, my stubborn spirit wouldn't succumb to the pressure to throw oneself into a university without a thought to life experience, personal dreams, or the debt to come. I am the middle of 5 that my parents had, making it very unlikely that I'd have college financed for me. So I put it off and went to Peru as my peers went with the flow and did "what they're supposed to do." No template for life is encompassing enough for the diversity of our unique spirits and dreams. It's a trap that feeds on fear.
In Peru I learned Spanish, Salsa dancing, and spent my time volunteering in a small village near Cusco as well as in Cusco itself for about 4 months. I became certified through Maximo Nivel to Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and did what I could to help locals learn English to market their products to traveling English speakers.
In a phase of feeling without direction, I began saving money by working for my father and his Canadian diving partner as their deckhand during the Sea Cucumber seasons in SE Alaska. For months at a time I slept within a foot and a half of 2 grown men, with absolutely no privacy or status. "Shrub, do this! Shrub, do that!" :) His Canadian partner dubbed me Shrub, a Canadian term supposedly meaning Granola. It's since become the logo of my personal crochet line: SHRUBWEAR.
At a certain point I had saved enough and was ready for a big shift. I had always been a tactile person, often sharing hugs, squeezes, and shoulder rubs. It seemed only natural to study massage therapy and bodywork. Portland also seemed to be the logical next place for my spirit to grow in. I was already an actress at this point, though I wasn't pursuing it on a professional level yet. My only thought was to find a convenient, portable career that could pay my way through the rest of whatever else I decided to do. What's more portable than your own loving hands? I can do massage anywhere, anytime, which I frequently do; it's wonderful. But in the process of learning how to understand my therapeutic boundaries and be an excellent giver, I began to melt. The armor I'd been wearing fell away and my heart was as ready as ever to follow a dream that had been there all along. Not, 'I want to be an actress.' I AM an actress.
I've been modeling for various photographers and designers over the last spring especially, and have recently begun to be recognized as a capable actress. I played a small role as a restaurant diner in the upcoming feature "Holed-Up." I'll be in 2 upcoming music videos, and have been casted as the lead of an upcoming local TV series about -guess who? A Massage Therapist who seems to be the caregiver to everybody in her life! Synchronicity blows my mind on the daily. I'll be featured in a blog interview soon, at which time I'll provide a link. I'm also working on 2 different books.
One is going to be a collaboration with other women, and I'm feeling strongly about the title-to-be, Becoming Beautiful. It's a look at what it takes to be a beautiful person amidst our western society of judgment and conformity and sameness. I'd like to follow the trail of what we find beautiful and how to get there. Is 'Beautiful' truly a person that hits everything on the media's checklist, or is it someone that just makes you feel good to be near? We can all be that unique beauty that inspires others, it just takes the vulnerability to accept self and let it be seen. I came from a place of feeling immeasurably ugly for a long time. Only recently as I've begun to heal and love myself, have I been able to let the private out. And I'm finding that as I reveal more of the sacred, I actually become more beautiful. Truly, photos of me as a teen show someone who was holding on to a lot of anger. Bitterness is ugly. Our postures say a lot about what we're holding onto, and insecurity speaks as plainly as words. Confidence=self-love and it's beautiful. Ego is another thing entirely, and it's not so pretty.
The other book is one that I started after a totally psychadelic epiphany when I realized that we're not separate at all. I looked at my hand and could see that although my thumb and forefinger seemed separate at the distal ends, they clearly are of the same hand. In the same way, a mushroom may appear to be singular in one place, but the same fungus could be producing similar mushrooms states away, you know mycellial mats can be enormous. Yet they're all expressions of the same life force, as we are, though we've forgotten because we don't have physical roots and we no longer have the same reverence for the Earth so the connections are harder to see. Epithelial cells die continuously, but do I die? Someday it might seem like I die, but those are just my cells completing their cycle. Life force is cyclical oneness. The title is simply, God Is Love: A Collection of Expressions.
I try to live my life as Ghandi suggests: Be the change you wish to see in the world. Shouldn't we all be what we think there needs to be more of? As a girl that needed someone to listen, I became a listener, a giver. And now I'm an example of the healing that can take place when we listen to ourselves.