Two months ago, I attended my first art salon at the Bluebird in Chicago. Created and hosted by Bluebird‘s owner Tom McDonald and artist JC Steinbrunner, the salon’s intention is to provide a forum for exchanging ideas while providing artists an opportunity to converse about their work. The result: lively discussions about art (and wine) while dining with interesting new people.
Contemporary artist Leslie Baum was featured during the salon I attended. During her discussion, she spoke about her work, her inspirations, her intentions. At one point, she described her studio environment. Specifically, she shared two things that made me smile. The first: pottery chards. She spoke about how she considered pottery chards in her studio not simply as waste, but as a microscopic beauty with potential for macroscopic artistic impact. In other words, taking something that is small, and encouraging full acknowledgment of that small thing by drawing attention to it—making it bigger, figuratively and perhaps literally as well. Microscopic beauty made macroscopic. I like that.
Lesson for business environment: No, we should not sweat the small stuff. But we should be on the lookout for small gestures, small improvements, and small contributions in our workplace. And when we notice them, we should draw attention, making them big and real and appreciated.
Leslie also told a story about a particular piece involving three mediums: watercolor; pencil; turpentine. Turpentine?! Since when is that considered a medium? Well apparently, Leslie’s studio floor has quite a slant. As a result, some turpentine unintentionally made it’s way onto this particular painting, creating a highly obvious—but endearing—series of drip marks. Rather than fretting about it, Leslie adopted a new perspective: “In this moment, my studio floor’s lack of trueness inadvertently became another ‘tool’ to create my art.”
Lesson for business environment: In the design and construction industry, accomplished professionals want to produce the most error-free of construction drawings; the most properly detailed of millwork sets; the most articulate and precise of marketing qualifications and fee proposals; and the most poignant of images of our design work. But sometimes—and only sometimes—we will need to be ready to embrace something that might otherwise have been a blemish. We might have to recognize that this time, our powerpoint presentation will not have audio after all, or that our photographic images will need to be done in a less-than-optimal season…the list goes on and on. Please understand that I’m not suggesting that we stop striving for perfection! Instead, I’m saying that when something goes awry within our deliverables etc, we have choices. We can decide it’s a disaster and scrap the whole thing. We can make efforts to fix it. Or, in some cases, we can recognize it as acceptable, even worth appreciation—not unlike turpentine drips conspicuously displayed on an oversized piece of art.
In your own encounters with artists, what do you take away from their unique way of thinking? How might you apply their perspectives/approaches to your own professional world?