Archive for category: ArtiFacts

I’m of Italian descent. I was brought up in an Italian household with parents and grandparents who endured hard lives in Italy, came here to make better lives for themselves, only to have to live through the Great Depression. For them, wasting was not part of the program. Almost everything that came into their possession had a second life. Clothing was recycled, becoming material for rugs, being woven into quilts, or being cut or torn into scraps and used as cleaning and dusting rags. Paper bags from the grocery store were turned into book covers. Even the food (if any ever was left uneaten) was composted and used in the garden.

Dirty dish water was poured on lawns and in gardens, with the hope that the residual soap would kill the weeds. There were no paper towels, no plastic bags, no bottles, no cups. Someone else’s junk became our treasures.We wasted nothing and took pride in — and sustenance from — our frugality.

That’s why I’m so glad to see an upturn in the concern about waste and what to do about it. That’s why it feels so familiar, comforting, and right. It pleases me to see the design world purposely using products made from recycled or repurposed other products.

What’s Old is New

I recently listened to a podcast on NeoConversations called, “Design and the Circular Economy.” I was taken by the comments of one of the speakers, Guilio Bonazzi, CEO and Chairman of Aquafil, a company dedicated to new production models for sustainable development. Aquafil creates reused and reusable fibers and fabrics using waste materials, purposefully formulating those materials to have second lives, third lives, and more. Bonazzi refers often to the life cycle of materials. He and Aquafil respect the planet, respect the gifts to be derived from it, and learn creatively, every day, while adding beauty and reuse to everyday life.

Material produced by Aquafil is used by Interface in some of their carpeting, in Armani clothing, in H&M clothing, in the Adidas X Parley Collection, and in ever-increasing numbers of products for myriad uses.

In nature, nothing is lost. In Guilio Bonazzi’s world, nothing is lost. In my world, the philosophy by which I was raised is not lost. You’ll see it in my designs. Who knows? Maybe Bonazzi’s nonna and mine knew each other.

Maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. But Bonazzi, our nonnas, and I know this: Waste not, want not. Capisci?

Recently, while searching through Work Design Magazine, I came across two articles that could have been about my husband and me. I don’t mean to suggest we were mentioned by name or anything. It’s just that they seemed to celebrate the differences in our working styles; although, the first one was a tad more cryptic than the second. But more on that in a moment.

I work best when I’m connected with nature, when filtered sun streams along my desk, when my eyes can take a break from my computer screen and look at my thriving plants. I need a little background noise and some occasional white space (which I define as a kind of general emptiness) to clear my artistic mind when it gets a little too cluttered.

My husband, on the other, who’s a writer, works best in seclusion, in quiet spaces with absolutely no distractions, visual or aural. His thought process is like a train in a tunnel: He runs on a single track toward the light at the end, with complete focus. As you might imagine, we have frequent philosophical discussions about the difference (if any) between concentration and obsession. I won’t tell you which of us takes which side of the discussion. 😉

Can you imagine both of us having to work in the same office? Neither can we.

That’s What Makes Horse Racing

We’re all different, with different styles, preferences, desires, and predilections. So, when it comes to work environments, why do we think one size will fit all? And that question brings me back to the two Work Design Magazine articles.

The first one, from April of last year — “World’s Top Performing Workplaces: How The Best Beat The Rest” — cited a study by Leesman that surveyed 151,770 employees across 971 workplaces worldwide that concluded:

People favor variety in their workplace [sic] … workplaces that score highly feature working areas that accommodate all sorts of tasks … greater variety comes at the expense of personalization … better manage a wider variety of workplace designs, are organizations denying their employees the opportunity to personalize space?

So, that means … well … we’re not exactly sure what it means, since it contradicts itself and ends with a question. Let’s move on to the second article, shall we?

The second article, which ran in May of this year — “Thoughtful Design Methods To Foster The Wellness-Minded Workplace” — was a little more concrete and confident in its findings (Whew!):

By integrating work choice into design, organizations can support day-to-day processes and foster individual wellbeing while encouraging social connections through design … investing in employee health and fitness can lead to unity across the workforce, emotional wellness, a sense of responsibility, increased productivity and increased employee loyalty.

Okay. Health and fitness notwithstanding, that article affirms what common sense already indicated: By accommodating the ways in which people prefer to work and interact, they’ll be happier, get more work done, and be more likely to stick around.

The moral of the story is this: If you or your people aren’t happy with your workspace, change it.

We might be birds of a feather. But we’re not pigeons.

We were at a home a while ago to perform a staging assessment. The home was owned by a pleasant young couple. Since they’d bought their home, they’d had two beautiful children. As a result, what they’d always intended to be their starter home was now bursting at the proverbial seams. It was time for them to move.

The walls told us what wonderful and proud parents they were, about every trip they took, when they got married, what their hobbies were, and more. The walls told of the children, too — a list of jobs well done, gold stars, and the artwork they’d created incorporating construction paper, crayons, and lots of blue clouds.

What we had to tell them was considerably less joyful: “Don’t make this personal.”

Take a Step Back

Staging your home is really visual merchandising, the unwritten way to appeal to prospective buyers. Likewise, staging your workspace is a way to appeal to prospective employees, prospects, and customers. As a marketing tool, staging has to be inviting enough to attract people. But it also has to be impersonal enough to allow people to imagine themselves in the home or the workspace.

Every personal aspect of the property says you, not them. It distracts them from imagining themselves in the space. It detracts from your ability to sell or lease the space. And it subtracts from the value you’ll get from the space.

In fact, in a recent survey, the National Association of Realtors researched the effectiveness of staging from the perspectives of sellers and buyers. From the perspective of sellers, the survey found:

1. 85 percent of staged homes sold for six to 25 percent more than un-staged homes.
2. 68 percent of those homes sold for at least nine percent more than their neighbors’ un-staged homes.

From the perspective of buyers, the survey found:

• 49 percent said staging increased the value.
• 77 percent said a staged home made it easier for buyers to see themselves in it.

Enjoy the View

The young couple whose home we assessed was also quite gracious. They took our advice … and didn’t take it personally. They packed up everything that had personal meaning to them, put the children’s toys away, removed the clutter, and prepared their home and themselves for their next chapters.

As part of our standard staging program, we sent the couple our complete assessment, along with a list of to-dos. We also sent a note of apology for the de-personalizing. Shortly thereafter, we received a thank-you note from them. In the note, they let us know the staging process had given them some insight they’d use in purchasing their new home.

That one they can make very personal.

This is not your grandmother’s rocking chair. That’s because it’s my grandmother’s rocking chair. Aside from the facts that (1) I’m shamelessly sentimental (2) value is subjective, and (3) the value in that chair is the familial heritage it represents, I couldn’t part with that chair because it’s simply beautiful. And its beauty notwithstanding, that elegant piece of furniture has not outlived its utility.

It’s soundly constructed. It’s been well cared for. It’s surprisingly comfortable. And, exactly as its makers intended, it manifests its utility by providing a place to sit. Much like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, all it needed was a little love.

It Depends How You Look At It

Since perspective is everything, I decided to coin a term for my perspective. Combining the first two letters of vintage and the second two letters of new, I call it VIEW. Since we apply VIEW to all of the the work we do in The ArtFitters, I decided to apply it to my grandmother’s chair by doing three very simple things:

1. I oiled the wood to bring out its sheen and to prevent it from cracking.
2. I purchased a new seat cushion to provide a little extra comfort.
3. I purchased a new throw pillow to give it additional character.

I always expected my grandmother’s rocker to be usable. What I didn’t expect is that its utility would increase to the point at which it’s now the most-used prop in our residential-staging inventory.

What a Difference an Attitude Makes

It’s helpful to remember attitude has more than one meaning: It can mean your manner, your disposition, or your feeling about something. It can also denote the way you perceive or behave toward something. And that can make all the difference, especially as you determine the beauty, the value, and the utility of things.

You can call things old, or you can call them vintage. You can call things new, or you can call them un-used. It doesn’t matter. The only things that matter are your attitude toward those things and the way you use them.

It’s all in your point of VIEW.

The other morning, my husband and I were reading a humorous article about the days when we, as kids, could hop on our bicycles after school, knowing the only admonishment we’d receive was, “Don’t come home till supper.” After we got through laughing, reminiscing, and recalling our youthful days with a kind of wistful nostalgia, I realized how much freedom we had had back then. We had such amazing opportunities to imagine, to explore, to make decisions, and to think independently.

I’d get on my Columbia bike and pedal my way to adventure, looking to see what I could find along the way, what treasures I could bring home to my mother. I saw beauty in Queen Anne’s Lace and other wildflowers, in acorns, pinecones, and horse chestnuts. All these things I’d carry home to arrange into something worthy of my creativity. After all, that stuff was there for the picking, right alongside the road.

But the real finds were in the bulky waste pickup. Those were the days in which adaptive reuse was called dump-diving. And I was plunging in head first. I remember being so excited the time I found a really great frame. It was just waiting to come alive with a fresh coat of paint and a family picture. I got a lot of brownie points for that find.

The Past is a Present to the Future

All that fun I had creating memory lane on my bicycle informs the work we do at The ArtFitters today. We find new uses for things that frequently have been forgotten. We have a keen, practiced eye for placing unlike things together, in creating wholes that are so much greater than the sums of their seemingly disparate parts, in turning adaptive reuse into eclectic design.

As a child, I strove to surprise my mom with things that would please her. Today, The ArtFitters strive to surprise our clients with things that please them.

We all search for our purposes in and our contributions to life, to create meaning in and fulfillment through our work. Sometimes our efforts are thwarted by peer pressure, by a lack of self-faith, by misplaced desires to make others happy or to make money. But sometimes …

Years ago, I read What Color is Your Parachute. It told me to look at what I loved doing as a child.

If I’d read that book while riding my Columbia, I’d have saved a lot of time.