Ever wondered how our packaging for your pretty little shelfies came along? Meet Melbourne based artist, Jessica Wall. The creator behind our musings. This is how our oh so insta-worthy packaging came about and how a simple #melbourneartist hashtag had us all drooling overnight ...
We all met up in her Aunt's Chocolate Shop in Carnegie, after Founder and CEO of Beauty's Got Soul, Leonie Henzell was scrolling through the 'gram #MelbourneArtist when she first came across Jessica Wall's abstract fluid art. What stands out about Jess in an agglomeration of Melbourne creatives? Someone who lets her work speak for itself.
Don’t be mistaken , these creations are not 'extra' looking bath bombs. Firstly, starting in the living room "near the window just because obviously when you're filming it you want as much light to come so it’s the best quality and then when I started up my Instagram pages people were taking to it and friends and family wanted to buy it I started to up it to a full lighting kit which I got for my birthday and its been so good. Now I can do it wherever".
No Cleopatra styled milk-filled baths over here, just a palm-sized bowl with detergent , lemon, and other top secret formulations to create these preen packaged pieces, ultimately, inspired by Buzzfeed science experimentation videos for a university elective "science photography" - spurring into the ultimate at home experiment turned business and passion. Ultimately she "just wanted to do something different …. I was very interested in resin art but its very expensive but I thought this was cool and something to try out and I experimented with just paint - I have so much at home so I did it that way to start".
Wall's practise comes about in an organic matter, and her humbled attitude seeps into her work fluidly as "I'd go to bigger places but at the moment I'm happy doing what I'm doing [...] I change between the two [mediums] all the time. Like, right now I'm really into filming so I'll push this and all the different forms I'm feeling at the time".
Admitting that everyone has tough days, creative constraints are a well accepted challenge as "I feel like when I just do an experiment and I don’t like any of it, I just move past that and try again so I don’t mind it because it pushes me to work harder and do more and then eventually. I know that some experiments will be nothing and I'll get so annoyed but then the next day it'll be something awesome", a change in attitude and mindset ultimately changes everything.
"I think I just love [that] you never know how [the experiments are] going to turn out and I love watching the videos of how they make it because you just never know and that’s the same with mine".
Although Jess has a multitude of prospects set on her horizon in her creative field, the key to maintaining her audience in the ever-changing digital landscape "is consistent content, they followed me for the bubble, the fluid artwork, and I didn’t think it was right to start throwing video stuff in it there and mix it up."
No chopping and changing and ultimately working to her strengths. "You can only do one or the other unless you have two cameras. So, you have to decide one or the other - literally. Sometimes I get videos of things and it'll be really cool and then it'll change in two seconds and I'm like damn it, it would've been a good photo - that’s how it's going to be".
In terms of Instagram's algorithms taking over our feeds, the university graduate says "it really is a whole other world… [its] like learning a whole new course just to run your Instagram". Although the flexibility in presentation is broader on Facebook, "there's not much traction for that there", and she quickly learned that "Instagram let me build my businesses faster" as seen through J Wall Photography and J Wall Visual for videography.
Absorbing content from YouTube, her videography is documentary style "I realised once I left uni that I liked that more documentary style and I was looking for jobs and didn’t really get anything and realised what I liked and what I really wanted to try my hand in was wedding videography … and I thought I could just do it myself - people do it by themselves all the time".
You might be wonderings what's on for 2019? New print surfaces such as wood, metal, glass, and some more printed works up for sale.
To keep in the loop of Jess's new works, gallery pieces and much more, you can find her here .
Published on 07/03/2019 by Leonie Henzell CEO beauty's got soul