Lifestyle
This L.A. ceramist's vessels offer joy in uncertain times. Thank her 'weird imagination'
Linda Hsiao was standing at a weathered work table inside her ceramics studio in Altadena. It was the day after Halloween, and her two children, Saben Taylor, 5, and Wawona Hsiao, 3, worked alongside her, hand-sculpting clay vessels as wild as a child’s imagination. Like Saben’s handprints in the concrete patio outside the studio, Hsiao’s own wildly creative imprint is clear in the whimsical vessels that line the shelves of the former two-car garage: from long-beaked toucan pitchers and owl juicers to Japanese daruma wishing dolls and Venus of Willendorf lady tiki cups.
“I’ve always had a weird imagination,” Hsiao said as she continued to work on an emerging large-scale vase. “I like the idea of creating mythical creatures that are a hybrid. They are ambiguous and not quite what you would assume. I wish they existed.”
“Are we going to school today?” Saben asked.
“Yes,” Hsiao replied, to his disappointment.
Ceramist Linda Hsiao and her children Wawona Hsiao, 3, and Saben Taylor, 5, get to work in the studio behind their home in Altadena.
“They know I enjoy what I do,” Hsiao said of her children and working from home.
“Many of my vessels are inspired by my kids,” Hsiao said after Saben and Wawona left for school with their father, architect Kagan Taylor. “I feel like I’m constantly being filled … and emptied.”
Hsiao grew up in Laguna Hills, where her parents, Taiwanese immigrants, ran a farm specializing in Chinese fruits and vegetables such as bok choy and bamboo shoots. Her proximity to the ocean and their farm inspired her love of nature, which she describes as “a leading force” in her life. Looking back, she laughs as she recalls explaining to her elementary school teacher that “watermelons were not just red, but yellow too.” This love for nature is evident in her ceramics, which often feature elements of the natural world.
From a young age, Hsiao, now 42, was drawn to working with her hands and taking art and sculpting classes. Her parents wanted to support her and sent her to a summer program at Parsons School of Design in New York City as a teenager. “My parents thought, ‘That’ll get New York out of her system,’” she said with a chuckle. But it only fueled her passion further.
Hsiao takes holiday ornaments out of her kiln in her studio.
Whimsical ceramic creatures are designed to hold birthday candles.
After high school, Hsiao attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she studied industrial design. Following her graduation in 2004, she dedicated nearly a decade to designing eyewear, often spending 12 hours a day in front of a computer. This intense focus left her feeling “dizzy” and craving a more hands-on creative outlet.
So she joined a few community studios in Brooklyn and started doing ceramics. However, living in New York was hard, and she missed gardening and the easy access to nature in California.
After nine years, she moved back to California, where she took ceramics classes at Saddleback College and Glendale Community College at night while freelancing — designing everything from eyewear to jewelry for big brands to snowboarding gear — during the day.
A hand-building class with ceramics artist and teacher Biliana Popova at Glendale Community College changed her career path. “I didn’t take to wheel throwing because I didn’t want things to be perfectly symmetrical,” Hsiao said. “I always wanted to manipulate my forms and change them. My hands always wanted to sculpt. After I took a hand-building class, I never looked back.”
“I always wanted to manipulate my forms and change them,” Hsiao said. “My hands always wanted to sculpt.”
Hsiao’s ceramics are sweet and quirky — tiki cups, Japanese daruma wishing dolls, tiny creatures and bird pitchers and creamers.
Later, after she met her husband — and before they had children — the couple collaborated on a series of handmade wooden baby rattles they sold as part of Knotwork LA, and she began to do ceramics out of their home in Highland Park. (They have temporarily stopped making the rattles but hope to re-stock them again as the kids get older.)
“Knotwork LA was created as an outlet to identify the work we do in our spare time,” she said. “Precious pieces of wood saved from other projects or found while hiking, ideas that came to us in the middle of the night and a desire to create beautiful, useful things.” After juggling freelance work and producing ceramics in the evenings and on weekends for 10 years, she decided to take a leap of faith and do ceramics full-time in 2016.
She started with an order of more than 800 plates and dishes for Curtis Stone’s restaurant, Gwen, in Hollywood.
Since then, her studio has evolved as her work has become more sculptural, and her inventory has become more broad.
Ceramic bird pitchers are inspired by nature.
A completed ceramic bird pitcher in blue.
Hsiao’s handmade ceramics and figurines, many of which she cuts out using a cardboard template after rolling the clay flat with a slab roller, exhibit a playful style that is thoroughly her own. “It’s kind of like sewing,” she said of using patterns. “I cut them out with a knife and mold and sculpt them afterward.”
Her works are filled with whimsy and joy, including a collection of platters and plates featuring inlaid porcelain flowers, vaguely defined creatures that hold birthday candles, penguin pitchers and buddhas. Although she has made lamps, she prefers to focus on affordable goods that can go straight into someone’s home for them to enjoy. “I like having a price point that is somewhat attainable for most people,” she said. “Lamps are expensive.”
Her dream was always to have a studio at home, invest in a kiln and save money on studio expenses. After purchasing their first home in 2020, the couple spent eight months redoing the garage, which had a collapsed roof, last year. The studio is now an artist’s dream, with two kilns, ample space to work, storage and a dedicated area where Hsiao can pack her orders.
“I was using our bedroom as our showroom before,” she said. “It was rough.”
Sketches of empty vessels hang on the wall of Hsiao’s studio.
“The first thing my mom bought me for my studio was a slab roller,” Hsiao said. “She said, ‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself. This is my gift for your studio.’”
But even though Hsiao is working from home most days, meeting people in person has always been a highlight of having a small business. In order to do even more of that, she, Heather Praun of Plant Material and designer Bianca D’Amico of Chaparral Studio launched a semi-annual craft show at Plant Material’s Altadena location. They’ve held “about five” of them so far; the next takes place Dec. 14 and 15. “The whole community shows up,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been lucky enough to participate in some of the most vibrant collections of makers throughout the years and made friends with many. It was a delight after moving to Altadena to find that so many of the makers have found themselves here raising families, going to the same schools and parks.”
“How she prioritizes creativity in all aspects of her life has always inspired me,” D’Amico said. “There is endless thought and time poured into her work, but she exercises that part of herself in every aspect of her life. Even dinner [at] home has a crafty element: food tossed colorfully into various homemade bowls, the kids always helping make the food and nothing needs to match; it’s all about the time spent together. There is a sense that life is happening NOW, and she is engrossed in the moment.”
“People can see that my work is hand built,” Hsiao said.
Hsiao said that balancing a small business in the backyard can be challenging while raising two young children, but she appreciates that she can return to the studio after she has put the kids to bed. “I’ve learned to love the quiet of working in the evenings, [and I ] try to take breaks on the weekends and fully spend time with the kids,” she said. “The balance is tough, but my kids see me trying to sneak in work since my studio is at home and always ask to help. They know I enjoy what I do, and I have no doubt they will spend more time with me in my studio as they get older.”
Despite feeling like an empty vessel sometimes — “much of it feels like there are never enough hours in the day,” she said — Hsiao knows time spent with her kids is fleeting. As she figures out what work/life balance means for her family, she often goes back to something artist and mother Megan Whitmarsh shared with her: “You will never regret all the work you didn’t make while your children were little because you decided to be a present and loving parent.”
In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating and producing original products in Los Angeles.
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
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The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”
The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.
Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.
Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.
Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.
The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.
The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”
Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”
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After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.
In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.
During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”
The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.
Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”
Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.
“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.
The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.
Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.
“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.
Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”
Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.
Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”
On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.
To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.
“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.
An underwater view shows US’ Lilly King competing in a heat of the women’s 200m breaststroke swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, on July 31, 2024. (Photo by François-Xavier MARIT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP via Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Bloomington, Indiana with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Lilly King and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Josh Gondelman, and Faith Salie. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
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