Today we’d like to introduce you to Sofia Laçin.
Hi Sofia, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Studio Tutto was spontaneously born 13 years ago. I was invited to paint a mural just as I was graduating college and asked Hennessy to paint it with me. Although we didn’t know how to paint a mural, we taught ourselves on-site. I just loved the experience of painting outside, exposed, right in the middle of daily life. It was difficult, challenging, vulnerable and electrifying.
After that first piece, we were invited to paint more and more. I learned that having a creative business was about artistic talent of course but also about connections and traditional business practices. So after a few months I focused on growing as an artist but also as a business person.
Since that first taste, Studio Tutto has grown into a public art firm producing site-specific artwork in both 2d & 3d throughout California. We’ve made over 85 installations from murals to metal installations and soil sculptures. We’ve developed our practice, expanded our view of ourselves and what we can do, and honed in on an environmental mission. We believe artwork is a valuable tool to educate people about the preciousness of their surrounding ecosystem that often goes unnoticed.
Through our artwork, we tell stories found in nature that are both marco, like that of the changing seasons, and intimate, like that of the vital relationship between the monarch butterfly and the milkweed. With each piece, we endeavor to inspire a sense of awe and respect for our natural world.
We are currently working on a number of exciting projects including a mural at an affordable housing development in South LA, a large-scale artwork to honor legendary mountain lion, P22, and the ecology of Griffith Park, a series of Seed Spires for a headquarters in DTLA and a series of MuralKits at various schools throughout Los Angeles to teach kids about nature.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Each art installation is site-specific and thus requires a novel approach every single time.
When we create a project, we think about it from an aesthetic, conceptual, structural, and educational perceptive. It’s a challenge to hold all of those considerations in a single artwork successfully. Every piece has a struggle period that precedes resolution.
We always joke that we should just do one thing and nail it, but that wouldn’t be site-specific at all or very interesting to us as artists. We have to learn how to make it happen with technical parameters, both known and unknown.
It’s a balancing act between reality and vision with many twists and turns. I have learned through experience those obstacles and challenges push us in new directions. Constraints become open doors.
I find it difficult to make work in public. Although I love it, it’s vulnerable and can feel emotionally and physically draining. Like most things, both are true – I relish in making a work in front of an audience for the input and challenge of it, but I also feel naked, anxious for the artwork to get out of its awkward phase and move into beauty. But that can’t be rushed of course – it teaches patience and faith in your vision.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We’re a women-owned & operated public art studio. Our site-specific installations bring vibrant and earthy color, textures and form to all kinds of spaces, both interior and exterior. We are known for imparting a felt sense of softness and nuance through our nature-inspired artwork.
One of our most recent murals, Hills on Fire, captures simultaneous feelings of awe and fear – awe for the flora and fauna of our hills and fear of losing them to fire. This 100+ foot long mural at the renowned Hollywood showroom, Blackman Cruz, depicts scorched native plants, a horizon aglow with flame, and air thick with yellow-grey smoke. Sticky monkey flowers in reflective gold add glints of light to the wall and hint at their irreplaceable value for our pollinators.
We currently have a show of our evolving earthen sculptures called Seed Spires. Developing this project was a mixture of engineering and ecology and artwork – finding an intersection between those worlds. The spires sprout and bloom to provide nectar to local pollinators, but first and foremost, we consider them symbols — a demonstration and invitation to re-imagine our urban landscapes. Seed Spires are intended to highlight the need for intentional and nourishing urban habitats to feed our dwindling pollinators. We will be installing Seed Spires at various sites around LA this fall to bloom this spring.
What were you like growing up?
I have always been an observer, a fast mover, a beauty seeker.
Animals and plants have been magnets to me for as long as I can remember. I’ve always felt a strong sense of connection to the creatures that exist in such a balanced and harmonious way in the world. Drawn to delicacy of plants and elegance of trees. I always say hi to any animal I come across people and birds alike.
As a kid, I loved transforming space. I used to spend hours repainting my bedroom and moving the furniture around to see what the felt effect would be. Making a defined and thoughtful space is something I’m physically compelled to do like I feel it in my body. I get so much satisfaction from arranging anything from flowers to furniture, to art to hair. It’s practice in sensing resolution and tension and how to settle in the right balance.
Growing up, I loved going to work with my parents at their studio, watching them put together photo shoots with collaborators from different worlds. My parents encouraged free expression and creative play and let me participate in brainstorms and the making of a scene from childhood. We still collaborate all the time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.studio-tutto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiotuttola/
