Hello & Welcome
It all started one night during my sophomore year of college. First real apartment. 2 am. I was stressing about my dramatic monologue for acting class the next morning and struggling to cry about my negligent father. I didn’t care much anyway since I was obviously destined to be a Broadway dancer. So, like every other room rearrangement therapy session, I dragged my Ikea king bed from a graduated senior (you get it) across the room to the other wall. I liked the new fresh feeling it aroused, but something still wasn’t right. The bookshelf had to move too. So off she went. The Ikea bookshelf I scored from another graduated student traveled to the opposite wall. Unfortunately this meant that the dresser and the wall of records needed new homes too. I was determined to find a satisfying layout, but had an unusually large room for college, an indecisive mind, and too many options. That’s one of the few plus sides of living in a lower income/college kid infested neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut: huge town house room for 450/month.
After elegantly styling the new space with my wall tapestry, license plate, and Christmas lights for over an hour, I collapsed on my bed and stared at the ceiling for five minutes, awaiting some sweet relief. It came for a moment, but disappeared just as quickly. Per usual, I knew what had to be done to finally sleep soundly: move it all back. My roommates never enjoyed this much, as it sounded like nightly construction work coming from my room, which is understandable. The following evening, they were thrilled to hear of my life-altering idea to draw a layout of my room, make paper cutouts of furniture pieces, and drag them around the page to my heart’s content. We hoped this would make my weekly missions of adjusting the space a bit less frequent. I may still have been eager to rearrange, impulsively paint it charcoal gray (it was urgent), and relieve some stress, but at least it helped me push the impulses off a bit longer (didn’t stick too well because I literally did this a few days ago).
That story may have been somewhat dramatized for audience engagement purposes, but it has a couple morals so who cares. One: find friends who accept your rearranging obsession as a coping mechanism to survive theater school. And two: interior design has a huge impact on your mood and enjoyment of daily life. They say a messy home is a messy mind, and I absolutely agree.
Anyway, I believe it is time for an introduction and an explanation. They call me Justin Haupt, which I’m sure all five of you already know, and you’ve landed at my most recent creative development, Quarter Century Modern. Thank you for being here! If the pun isn’t clear, this will not only be an outlet as an interior designer to share details about projects, the process, and elements that spark my interest, but also discoveries and curiosities navigating my twenty fifth year (and hopefully the years following).
So let’s kick it off now! To sum up this week’s designer inside scoop, it takes many tries to find what feels best to you in your space, and that feeling is more important than any other aspect of design. Do what feels good. My other discovery was that a 3D sketching program serves me much better than paper cutouts and amateur floor plans (delicious portfolio is on its way). Regarding my feelings on living for a quarter century, I’ve decided it’s never too late to change your mind and try something new. To ignore that voice saying you’re not capable. To round out this dramatic paragraph, I couldn’t help but attach this quote from Martha Graham that followed me from my first day of musical theatre school to today as a designer:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open… No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others”.
I don’t think artists ever truly feel satisfied, but I think I’ll always try. Probably in my room at 2 am.