The X Factor in Your Creative Process as Illustrated in Romy Randev's Looma Lamps
Romy Randev is the designer of the Looma Lamp. He completed graduate studies in Architecture and Art History then spent the next ten years working as an interactive designer spinning his creative energies making short films, mobile-apps, websites, album art, among other creative projects. Years of comprehensive thought and execution in design, visual composition, architecture, and art brought Romy to focus on fusing glass, electronics and bamboo to create the Looma Lamp collection.
As a writer with philosophical and sometimes pedantic tendencies, the path to creative discovery and the time from idea to object materialization enchants me.
ONCE THE CREATIVE PROCESS BEGINS
The creative process of any entrepreneur begins as a medley of experience and is undeniably impacted by circumstance. It sparks at the moment where the creative end (or beginning) or object idea is discovered. The internal workings of the mind that sustain and turn an idea into a well-crafted object is the unknown/subjective X variable that drives the will.
Picasso's X is abstraction
Michelangelo's X is human form
KNOW YOUR X
X is the substance causing attachment to the creative thing you are drawn to, and it is that draw that feeds the will-power, which sustains the development of the idea until materialization. For instance, Romy's X is a fascination with light and glass that accumulated into his creation of the Looma Lamp. But what is most interesting is the X is also Romy's unexplained draw to light and glass. In this article, I will not attempt to assign an explanation for why you are fascinated with let's say clay, for example. It could easily be said that perhaps your grandmother introduced you to clay when you were younger. But for me and what turns on my light, as far as I'm consciously aware, is not rooted in my past experiences, rather it is unexplainable and has my interest not just momentarily but enough to view my X as a deep well waiting to be explored further.
X is what makes artists hold onto a painting instead of selling it to a stranger - the artwork represents an emotive process that accumulates into a personal, sincere physical expression/manifestation. So in essence, it’s not the object that catches me, it is the artist’s X that sustains and manifests the objects development that is most interesting.
X is representative of the uniqueness in all humans, and art is it's communication method.
The Looma Lites were not designed to grow corporate profit margins. It was Romy, and his years of working in the creative field, studying the expression of beauty in art and buildings throughout time, a burst of ambition and razor focus to select and settle his thoughts on the dynamics of light and the shape and color of glass to create the Looma Lite. Imagine the internal development - the enchantment Romy must have had watching light move. It’s beautiful. The stimulation of light on X.
My grandmother recently told me that when buying a house, the house will come to you. I believe the same is true of a craft, passion, or any love.
Looma Lamps are a design hybrid of modernism, technology and old-world craftsmanship. The lamps are built to last a lifetime using sustainable materials of handmade kiln-fired glass, raw bamboo and of course light as the function, but certainly not the sole driver of Romy’s X.
Originally from Ottawa, Canada Romy now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Olita Charlie
Author
Always seeking bold individuals acting on profound, creative ideas