Sep 2024 – Home Office Charm

This week’s AI generated featured image gets an 8/10 it resembles the mess when you are doing product photography.

This week, I was reminded of my academic interest in the Journal of Organisational Aesthetics, which comes out of the highly lauded Tavistock to explore how human senses and artistry inform businesses and many other company practices found in charities and government.

Since I currently work at the intersection of art and organisational behaviour creation, I thought my take on organisational aesthetics might be unique and was looking forward to presenting a couple of papers to this scholarly community.

However, I later discovered that the very thing informing the presentation of my art practice is mostly from my experience in my first career, where appealing to the customer’s five senses was what we were all about in the world of the five-star spa.

I had an intense weekend. Synthesizing a range of ideas in re-doing some product photography. I had to fit in with Etsy’s new rules for sizing from listening to some of their reasserting of the preference of the algorithm for light backgrounds, in pictures. I also had to remember what my shelf styling class taught me about arranging items with natural materials. Additionally I integrated what the product photography coach said about getting good lighting with proper window positioning and using tools to get filler light to remove shadows and cast secondary light on areas of the product. Those are the three main main pieces of aesthetics advice that Etsy sellers get. It’s given as a recommendation of appealing to customers and selling more items. And the practice would appear to be in the thick of organisational aesthetics, however the scholars do say they distinctly focus on beauty for the sake of engaging the senses and not just for profit or sales.

I dug deeper into what organisational aesthetics might mean to me and the art I do and how I present it. I asked myself:

Q: What is this Aesthetic that I create and cannot avoid repeating? Where does it come from?

A: It comes from within and some of it might be the imprint of your spa and beauty years.

Hidden Letters: Purple Haze Abstract Mixed Media against lighter background.

Poured pain skin presented around a table lamp frame.

Hidden Letters Beach Blue: Abstract Mixed Media against lighter background.

Hidden Letters: Orange haze Abstract Mixed Media against lighter background.

After a few struggles and wondering why my arrangements do not look corporate in the slightest, no matter how many books and staplers I insert. I then realised my style comes from an imprint from my early career induction into the interior design and decor values of five star spas, Mayfair clinics/ treatment centres head offices and London’s West-End retail (my first proper Saturday job was Miss Selfridge in Knightsbridge).

It also dawned on me that this is a group (except the West End retail) that might welcome some help. I remember being a sole trader in my city of London treatment room, unsure how to fit out the space I was renting. However, my friend Rachel helped to wallpaper in Timinney Fowler and fit the blush-coloured carpet at the reception. I just had a flashback of getting the electrician to install a gothic lamp and fill up our IKEA cabinet; it would have been nice to have someone to discuss shelf displays that might make the products look more appealing through storytelling other than piling the boxes boxes of moisturiser and serum high.

If you are an independent trader or sole operator in the beauty and spa world and agree that product houses could help more with your displays please comment below.

If you are in any other industry and a sole operator and wondering how you learned to present your professional and personal brand and how organisational aesthetics fits with what you do, please comment below.

How did you come to know what your style or aesthic preference is? How does your organisation use organisational aesthetics not only to bring in revenue but just for the value of having something beautiful to look at?

Below is a list of the posts you might have missed from August

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The AI created the above featured image after a few attempts of not getting it quite right. I then asked it to show me an image of a black woman doing finishing touches to artwork and photography. I give it 8/10 this week.

This week I was able to do finishing touches, like mounting an abstract painting on paper onto canvas and setting up for product photography. I also completed the remaining x15 A5 sized artworks on art board.

Love this mixed abstract painting using acrylic inks on paper mounted on framed canvas.

It has taken over a year to complete the series of about 30 + mixed media artwork featuring paint skins for texture. I’m also glad to have come up with the concept of paint skin to create abstract versions of the monogram underpainting.

Making an abstract monogram from sculpted paint skins

I love the interesting mix of textures that the offset mosaic like arrangement in the colleage creates.

The knife-sculpted paint skin allows me to extend the boundaries of the canvas, reminding me of overgrown nails. 💅🏽, which I later trimmed down. This has inspired future works.