Fuseastry

What is it?

In the process of gathering my own style and design language, I’ve been busy! Floating above and through numerous ideas I loved during steps in my career. It all boiled down to the why. To figure out why I liked a design, style or element. All of which led me to question who I was as an individual. Who on earth am I?! Why do I like this!? No one else does!; yet everyone likes this other thing I like…does it make that one better? Why am I asking this?! Leave it to a creative to go all ‘existential’ with their thought process. I highly recommend it though. The feeling was as if I were finally deciding to be a child again and listen to what I had to say instead of ignoring myself and just do what I was told. It was a high and low process. Confusing at times. Honestly, after going through it, I don’t see how there would be any other way to break out of the ‘entry of design’ fog.

Comparison, self-conscious thoughts, goals to please others— I was on a slippery slope to be a ‘safe choice’ in a way I perceived safe to be at the time. (Which was actually not safe I will share more later). Safe choices make the money honey! They really do, because we are humans who actively seek safety consciously, subconsciously, even super consciously. Yet, what makes something safe? If you know me, my design style isn't really the ‘safe choice’ at a glance, or the popular option in my viewpoint— or the ‘The Stanley Cup’ of interior design as a friend and I concluded together (you know the cup, not the hockey one). In the beginning of designer soup, I cursed my focus of theory on this of me being too risky or wild in design. Was I too impractical? So, I became very ‘practical’ in designs and approach. It was not right; it wasn't the problem. It may have never been. It also was fking bland, so I had to do something. I have to change my approach in conveying the perceived ‘unsafe ideas’, where you really take a risk. Because you know who you are. The ‘unsafe’ idea was safe to me because I knew them and what they were derived from (me actually knowing I liked it without bias) and that they are so beautiful. I have to find a way to explain this approach!! So, what was it then? How can I share with others how to make it safe to them, known to them? How is safe in today’s world conjured? A ‘safe bet’ is the ‘popular choice’ and when you stick with the popular choice, you rest assured that it’s a pretty safe bet. Right? Because everyone is in on it. That is the sense of connectedness, the safety that it’s popular. Yet, to me, after discussing with a very close friend of mine, Amber Jenkins of HomeBabe, safe and popular sit at the same table many times.

How do you know when the table isn't where you want to be sitting anymore? Maybe you even never wated to sit there. Putting your bet on something that is perceived as safe, like a popular trend, without knowing how it connects you to me is very unsafe! You lose it’s connection quickly because when it fades, trends fade, but you still are sitting surrounded by those safe choice items yet completely disconnected from your immediate surroundings. The other side to this is the trend dosent fade, but you become disconnected from it and begin to get an ick, becuase you woke up to how disconnected you are to these things in actuality. Then was the choice safe in the long run? It’s just the knowing. That is what makes design safe. Internal knowing is the safe bet. If you don’t know what you like and just conform, then there is an ick. It’s not authentic to you. You’re disconnected from it. Now when the trend fades, because the safe connectedness of that style fades with the wave it came in on, you feel maybe not utterly unsafe, but not secure with your choice. All the while you stay alongside it, without a connection, just an ick. So, knowing who you are is always the safe bet! So let me show you a method I use to make my most authentic concepts as a sure thing while conjuring the most epic version of my unique style. Which is actually pretty easy if you give it a try!

I felt like I had to get the ‘ick’ or the ‘gunk’ out of my mind that I was picking up while being a baby magnet of design. I think everyone needs to do this, not just designers, everyone. It’s why people hire designers because it’s that time and eye that gets sharper and sharper and is more efficient and spot on when designers design than if you were to just jump in and try your hand at it for the first time. That’s putting a lot of pressure on yourself. Also, that is why many default to perceived safe routes of the masses. But, myself as a designer, I want to share with you a way to communicate a style using a method that orientates you, even a novice, to a connected design. Without feeling heavy with all these new design choices and asking that same question I did of “who even am I?”. THE DOOM SCROLL. Nahhhrrrr! (Australian accent). Along my journey I picked up a lot of baggage! Due massivley in part to the doom scroll my peeps. Physically, creatively and emotionally, it’s all forms of baggage. All very hard to deal with, especially if you are not a designer everyday you wake up from bed. Growing a discernment of knowing I don’t need to be the popular choice, and that made me feel safe. That is where the safety came from, me, knowing what I like without immense exterior influence because my creative boundaries were so thin. I want to design where others are pleased by how I conduct my work, not how much I can do what they want when they want it, the way they want it. I do not value or encourage the alignment of interior designers being people pleasers. I am an artist, I have a very particular set of skilIs! Haha (you know the movie). I digress. After many deaths and rebirths with myself and my surroundings, while using my formative mantra ‘Keeping Out of Character’ in an explorative process— I bring to you what I had found through the fog. Fuseastry.

Broken down to size it is, the Future, the Sea, and Industry Arts. These three components encourage a design that takes the farthest thought in your human mind, and the newest thought in your human mind and creates a space for both of them to sit next to each other. It’s more than old and new, because it’s a subjective experiential gesture, a 1:1. It is because you are pulling from your own deep personality of what is and was and will be conscious to you (not the scrolls of doom). Some of these thoughts ask us to use memory and hone in on objectively what the sea is. It is a vast, nurturing connectedness that at its deepest parts, we have not even been or know. The trenches. Industrial arts is how you create a mode or operational plane to use in this deeply personal vehicle of design you are generating. We all have been charmed by the crafts of industrial craft. What one resonated with you as a child? As a teen, as an adult? What do you think would charm your future self? What is in you immagination.

This is my interpretation which is driven with a soft, pastel, feminine vehicle. So, working with me at designer soup, you can already know that if this is your style of vehicle too, we can immediately proceed with it and it’s going to be a pretty quick process to get an initial concept. Your design choices can quickly become like an analogy of choosing a friend group. You are the sum of the circle you surround yourself with. It’s the influence! So, what do you value? Your friends probably share those values too. You can ask the same with your design choices. So, think about that when you are thinking of your surroundings. Personally, I’m kind of a lone wolf. I have a small group of friends that are in a diverse range of other groups. So, my style of my interiors is very strongly me, and secluded, but it is diverse in its tastes. Our friend groups change as we grow, mine certainly have. So, you will outgrow some of your surroundings, this is natural. But, you are always connected to your values and memories (the sea), and openness to new things (the future) and your current vehicle of style you authentically choose to surround yourself with that is connected to both of those things (industry arts). Industry arts is what we purchase, the materials. The lines and shape is pulled up from imagination or memories, the past and future. The present is what you choose to bask the lines and shapes in to create form with a color palette and available materials. Which gives them their zeitgeist, or current shading that gives a true form.

Zeitgeist: The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.