Meet Chenxi Huang of H.ood Studio in Altadena

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chenxi Huang.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I am an object designer, woodworker and 500hrs certified yoga teacher based in LA. I never thought I’d become a designer. My family was, and still is to some extent, fixated on an antiquated idea of a designer: he is gifted, is good at drawing things, plays piano, and is most likely not a woman. I was doing my first college degree in a small university on the other side of the earth, majoring in business when I spent a summer leading a boy scout camp in the U.S. It was a hectic summer for a 20-year old. A brief trip to the Chicago Art Institute helped me find some serenity. I nodded to the art school behind the museum – in awe of its visible amount of resources – determined to study art of some sort.

SAIC didn’t have much to do with my parent’s idea of a designer. I can study anything and work on anything that’s interesting to me. Two years into school, I’ve been through fashion design, ceramics, sound mixing, glass blowing, foundry, and of course, art history…but in furniture making, I found my true calling: wood. Wood is such a versatile material. It is initially very rigid, but can be easily cut, ground, burnt or assembled to any shape or form. Woodworking has also become more and more accessible for women. The power tools in the shop fascinated me. I feel empowered while using them properly, with the increasing number of female designers by my side.

I moved to LA 6 months after graduating, jobless, distressed, and couldn’t work due to my immigration status at the time. Naturally, I started playing with wood again. What kind of design can I create from the mundane? What ideas can I infuse into a daily object? What product can shine both at the corner of a drawer and up on the wall? At which corners am I the happiest in my apartment, and how can I make it better with wood? I answered all of these questions by sculpting 100+ wood spoons, some funky, some simple, and some very experimental. In this period of time, I completed all the wood spoons and cutting boards on my balcony. It was a grueling process to say the least. Yoga helped soothing my nerves while helping with the fatigue. I also visited yoga classrooms much more often at the time to reconcile with the frustration of being unemployed. Once my initial experiment reached a stopping point, I dived into yoga teacher training as the similarity between woodworking and yoga became clear to me: both are routined, calming, and empowering. In April 2019, I started my one-woman band, H.ood Studio LA, as a container of all my ideas and daily practices. In February 2020, I became a certified 500-hr Yoga instructor.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It‘s never smooth sailing. For designers starting out, the struggle is forever real. First of all, it’s always about money. The first year in LA without legal work permit, I had to worry about where the next meal was, who would help me, and how I could materialize those incessant design ideas. I remember the night before each woodshop visit, I would sit down and plan to every minute what needed to be done, as time = money in the shop. Then, the ideas I had didn’t always work. When I took on the project of making 100+ wood spoons, about 200 were tossed either because I didn’t like the product or they simply broke because of one bad cut in the shop. By spoon No. 80, downward facing dog was no longer an asana available to me due to the wear and tear in my wrists. Fortunately, people I met in the process didn’t hesitate to share pointers or tips. I now have a very deep tool bag I can reach into when it comes to large orders or complicated designs.

Even though the spoon project sold very well, I started doubting my old designs the more I looked at them. This was my 2nd year in LA, and I started working part-time at the neighborhood yoga studio. I got to meet a lot more people that were artistically oriented, both through the job and my family. They were never stingy on their compliments and suggestions – big confidence booster for me. I started taking pride in what I do and realized that I didn’t have to be so harsh on my old ideas. After an idea is born, it belongs to me no more – time to stop being both the maker and the judge. With the kind help from these wonderful people, I founded my own studio last year, H.ood Studio LA, to showcase the toys I’ve been working on.

But of course, 2020 hits. My yoga studio closed its doors for good and I was once again unemployed. However, perhaps not many people can say this, I am somewhat grateful for this year. I get to focus 100% on H.ood Studio while immersed in the strong support from my family. I also get to explore new inspirations, to furnish the studio’s portfolio, and to build a small client base. Currently, I am working on wood jewelry designs with architectural influence, attempting to bridge traditional jewelry materials with wood in a structurally reasonable manner. The struggles continue, but at least I have so much that I can depend on now that a struggle is just a small hurdle to step across, with joy and excitement.

Please tell us about H.ood Studio.
Since the foundation of my studio in 2019, my goal has been to create functional objects that evoke senses of beauty and playfulness. The studio has mainly been working on 2 product lines:

Line No. 1: Home objects. Since the kitchen has always been a sacred place for me, I’ve been studying various types of utensils, cutting and serving boards, and other tools that prepare or serve food. Well sanded wood with bee wax finishes can set a calming undertone for both the colorful produce and the geometrically sliced cheese or raw fish.

Line No. 2: Wood jewelry. Fashion is another passion of mine. I am forever on the lookout for unique and affordable jewelries. There aren’t a lot of well-designed wood jewelries in a market that’s quite polarized: people either look for very expensive signature pieces or get stuck with mass-produced “souvenirs” with little to no design. The initial impression I had for wood jewelries was that they’d be heavy and unwieldy, as wood cracks and hand sand can only go so far. Well, they turned out very light and durable. I then started adding pearls, tainted acrylics and 925 silver to the funky wood shapes that I cut to assign them, for a lack of better terms, “more drip”. These jewelry pieces gained instant traction and is the main focus of H.ood LA right now.

When the pandemic dials down, I will start bringing the studio to the crafts fairs, hoping for more exposure and collaboration opportunities with artists of different disciplines.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
There hasn’t been any regret for the decisions I’ve made. However, there were definitely better ways at materializing the designs than my approaches. For example, while working on the spoons project, I hand chiseled each and every spoon with an old-schooled gouge – very labor-intensive. However, these detours I took had merits. I was indeed limited on the resources, which caused some inevitable hard labor, but I also had the time to study, to ponder the great many possibilities of every design in the monotonous process.

Contact Info:

• Website: Hoodstudiola.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: h.ood_la

Image Credit:
Some of the images are credit to WHY

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