We recently connected with Ingrid Yi-Chen Lu and have shared our conversation below.

Ingrid Yi-Chen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Growing up in a design family, I’ve always known I wanted to pursue a creative path. I got into graphic design and illustrative work in high school. It wasn’t until I moved to New York City to attend art school that I realized I wanted to build a studio practice professionally. I went back to drawing, painting, and making with my hands. I currently have my studio at Pratt Institute, where I’m working towards an MFA. I work in painting, drawing, ceramics, and installations.

Ingrid Yi-Chen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. Growing up, I’ve been surrounded by the dazzling city landscape: menu grids of shaved ice, bubble tea, and night market snacks; family birthdays and striped number candles on black forest cake; stacks of ribbon rolls, DIY fabric scraps, and old confetti packs found at Dihua Street. These observations have slowly influenced my art-making processes now, which involve collecting, playing, navigating, journaling, and thinking extensively: “mapping.”
In both Taipei and New York, I go on these ritualistic walks. I often visit ribbon stores, 99-cent discount stores, or party supply stores to hunt for materials to use in my works like ribbons, sequins, pattern paper, packaging wraps, and boxes. Sometimes I just look at the interior designs and arrangement of objects in these stores.
I would say my studio operates slightly like these stores, a world of its own. In my studio, there are paintings of different scales, a stack of drawings, ceramic pieces hanging along the side of the paintings, and ribbons draping from the back of the canvases. I work in oil with a mix of acrylic, graphite, colored pencils, and markers. I keep track of my collected materials in grid shelves and organizers. I keep a journal and a digital diagram for recording my daily life, materials, and elements I use in my work.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of making art is the opportunity to give anything in my life a place to be, whether it is a memory, a moment, a sound, an object, or a feeling. I am able to see my surroundings with a new perspective every time. I went back to my hometown this past winter and summer, something as simple as a window design, fruit posters on the street, or an old park nearby interest me. I think I would not have noticed these things as a child, now they are given new meanings. Everything has become part of the process.
I have been thinking a lot about one of the first paintings I made as a child, a watercolor on canvas full of stars, smiley donuts, houses, and a teacup. There are these elements that still feel very relevant to my work now. To be able to play is also one of the most rewarding aspects of being creative, which is timeless.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I remember reading Henri Bergson’s “Time and Free Will,” which explores time as nonlinear and the self is never fixed but constantly changing in motion. I would like to keep this in mind throughout the different stages of being and making.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ingridyichenlu.com/
• Instagram: @ingridluuuu

Image Credits

Personal photo: Alvin Yao