Club Monaco's diamond-shaped display of old porcelain plates... I’ll be lingering longer in the ceramics section of the next antique fair I visit! (Photo from The Visual Beat Blog ... see link below)
People want to know – what skills make a good artist? One I feel that’s really important is to be a good observer of the world around you. Artists of all kinds love to be a fly on the wall, observing things no one else is looking at twice. Why? Because all these things are part of our world and when we want to speak about ourselves and our relationship to it, we can draw on these observations to help us create whether we collage, draw, decorate, write book or song, etc.. Calling on the observer in us allows us to notice colours, patterns, details, textures, shadows, layouts, etc. and enables us to determine what it is that makes something so appealing, so interesting or to capture the “thingness” or essence of something. Once you can call up that knowledge and use it effectively in your art, what you gain creatively is priceless. It costs only a few minutes of your time to jot down a note, scribble a sketch or snap a cell-phone photo of whatever peaks your curiosity at a given moment. You never know, perhaps one day in the not-so-distant future, it might become something that helps you solve a creative dilemma.
Home Décor: Drawing on My Childhood
One such dilemma that constantly befalls me is how to decorate my walls? Believe it or not, even as an artist, I struggle with this issue; yet I often find myself being called upon to help others decide where to place their photos or pictures. It’s funny, but I have no difficulty doing this for them… it’s just my walls that paralyze me! I guess because I feel like it’s going to be a permanent change which is really silly because nothing’s ever written in stone… home décor can be such a temporary thing changing from season to season. Speaking of décor, my parents didn’t have oodles of money to re-decorate our house but they loved to endlessly re-arrange the furnishings every few years. By re-positioning and re-upholstering furniture with updated fabrics or giving the walls a new coat of paint colour or wallpaper they freshened up the look of our home. I recall my father adding orange paint and fabulous floral wall paper to our navy blue tiled kitchen – it was such a bold and sensational move! I never realized it then but observing the constant transformation of my childhood home now helps me to compose visually. So when dealing with my wall display paralysis, I often draw on my parents’ sense of interior decorating… it’s a precious part of their legacy to me.
Club Monaco's vintage postcards, posters & maps display. Their nostalgic South-west American feel is perfectly in sync with the store's then-current fashion. (Photo from Display World Nomads Blog... see link below)
Obsessing Over Store Window Displays…
Last year I recommended reading Geraldine James’ Creative Walls: How to Display your Treasured Collections. It too inspired and encouraged me so much so I’ve become obsessed with studying store display windows for further inspiration. For a couple of years now I’ve been admiring Club Monaco’s displays ogling not their clothing (which I love) but their marvellous window backdrops! They’re always so imaginative, often transforming ordinary objects: wool, old postcards and books, crumpled and origami papers, post-it-notes, paper clips and even paper bags into cool, breath-taking backgrounds for their fashions. The artist/observer in me just loves this! I remember the first time I spied their old postcard collection arrangement, I felt like such a thief snapping a photo with my cell phone camera, but I just had to! Every season, their amazing displays just keep on coming! Last week, I was floored to discover hundreds of small black open paper bags (positioned vertically as though they were standing bottoms up on the wall) behind the store’s mannequins. Because of spotlighting, their colour and texture was gorgeous. They were like surreal flora growing on the display wall! Flights of the imagination like this must never go unnoticed or unrecorded by the observer. Remember, a good observer keeps records: written, visual and/or electronic.
Club Monaco's display of spindles and wool... such a smooth move to showcase the paraphernalia used in the history of fabric/fibre making along with their fashions. (Photo from Meliasson Blog ... see link below)
Andy Warhol at the Supermarket…
My interest in store window displays goes back further into my forays as a contemporary artist researching how to create art installations as well. What’s an art installation you may ask? Well, my simplified definition is that it’s a three-dimensional space (ie. a room) or beyond in which an artist builds a mood or theme about a subject that allows viewers to enter into the space/theme of their artwork – in some ways it’s more interactive than looking at painting or sculpture. The artist uses physical props, artwork (ie. photos, paintings, books, etc.), music, projections, text; whatever they feel is necessary to transport visitors into their headspace. It’s like creating theatre and when it works well, it’s magical. Journeying through an artwork which arouses multiple senses is an all-around amazing physical and mental experience; at times it can even be spiritual. I studied this because I wanted to create an installation about my father’s life in Pakistan as a musician; I wished to construct a space in which I could use fashion, music, furniture, sound archives and digital slide shows to bring his world to life. I’m still working towards realizing this project. One day I know, through my subliminal research and constant observations that I’ll find a way to make it real. Anyway, you’re probably wondering where the hell is Club Monaco in all this backtracking?! Well, during this time I discovered that in creating these installations, some artists turned to store displays for inspiration… remember how Andy Warhol transformed the everyday Campbell’s soup can into a sacred art object. Well Warhol, trained in commercial art, found his inspiration at the Supermarket! So there you go! You never know what novel idea might turn up in your simplest everyday observations; one that might eventually help you create some awesome visual concoctions… well, gotta go now to buy me a whole boat load small paper bags… the walls of our new place are going to look out of this world! 😉
Just wondering are there any store display windows that excite the Observer in you? Do you draw on a decorating sense derived from your childhood home or any other interesting places? I’d sure love to know…
Other Related Links:
The Visual Beat Blog
Display World Nomads Blog
Meliasson Blog
The Art of Hanging Pictures (Metro News Ottawa)
Christmas by the Book (A brief CYW review of Geraldine James’ book)
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