An Artist’s Perspective from the Easel
Welcome to the 319th installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, artists yearn for higher ceilings and find inspiration in the solitude of their studio.
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### XiaoXiao Wu, San Gabriel, California
**How long have you been working in this space?**
Five years.
**Describe an average day in your studio.**
An average day in my home studio starts around 8am or 9am, four to five days a week. The space is mainly for concentration, so I avoid eating or any entertainment while working. I usually develop two or three projects at the same time, moving between sewing, assembling, and filming. Weekends are for openings and exhibitions. Most days end in the late afternoon, and I work with history podcasts playing as I focus on the tasks in front of me.
**How does the space affect your work?**
A lot of my practice looks at how women’s spaces extend or shift — from domestic rooms to the body and everyday labor — so working in a home studio becomes part of that reference. The room feels like a simple mirror to the installations and soft pieces I make. Its small scale and limits make me consider how “female space” is built, compressed, or adjusted, and that thinking slips directly into the work.
**How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?**
My home studio is in an East Asian immigrant neighborhood, so the surroundings are part of my daily routine. I often stop by family-style East Asian restaurants and local supermarkets and talk with the shop owners. These conversations and small interactions give me a sense of the community I work in. On weekends I visit openings across Los Angeles, and I enjoy moving between these two different settings — the art world and the neighborhood’s everyday life.
**What do you love about your studio?**
I love that my studio is only a few steps away from where I live. It lets me shift quickly between daily life and making work without breaking focus. The space feels like a small shell with two sides — one for working and one for living — and I like the way those two scenes stay close but still remain separate.
**What do you wish were different?**
I sometimes wish the studio had higher ceilings and older, more industrial walls. My work often involves hanging textiles and larger soft structures, and more height would help me test them properly. I’m also drawn to spaces with an older atmosphere — the worn surfaces and slight roughness make me feel more grounded and comfortable when I work.
**What is your favorite local museum?**
The Hammer Museum.
**What is your favorite art material to work with?**
I don’t have a single favorite material — my work usually combines textiles, simple hardware, and everyday objects. I appreciate how these materials can transition between soft, structural, and spatial roles depending on their arrangement. Working with a mix of elements lets me build installations that respond directly to the body and to the space I’m in, instead of committing to one fixed medium.
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**How long have you been working in this space?**
Three and a half years.
**Describe an average day in your studio.**
An average day in my studio begins slowly and deliberately. I usually arrive mid-morning, allowing myself time to transition into a more inward, attentive state. The first moments are quiet: I straighten materials, lay out works-in-progress, and take stock of what feels most urgent or receptive that day. My practice is guided less by rigid scheduling than by listening, both to my body and to the work itself.
My studio functions as an ecosystem: fiber works rest alongside sound recordings, performance materials, and notes from readings or memories that surface unexpectedly. Moving between works allows me to follow intuition, memory, and repetition rather than forcing completion. Sound is an essential companion. I frequently listen to spirituals, gospel, jazz, or recorded sermons, oral histories, and interviews related to Black cultural memory. At times I work in near silence, especially when writing or recording sound, allowing subtle rhythms, breath, fabric, footsteps to guide the process.
**How does the space affect your work?**
I work in a studio without windows or natural light, which creates a contained, inward-focused environment. Materials can remain visible and unfinished, and ideas are able to accumulate slowly over time. The studio becomes a holding space, a kind of interior landscape where memory and process are allowed to unfold.
Scale and privacy are equally important. Open floor space makes it possible to handle works — to lift, drape, mend, and sit with them. This supports the vulnerability and care required by work rooted in personal and collective histories. In this way, the studio is not neutral; it operates as a container that shapes the emotional register of the work and allows making to function as sustained attention, reflection, and repair.
**How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?**
Each day begins