We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Miela Foster. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Miela below.

Hi Miela, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

As an artist and entrepreneur, I’ve always believed that waiting to be “discovered” is not a strategy—it’s a delay. One of the biggest risks I’ve taken was pitching foster the studio, my design studio, to curate a solo art show. It wasn’t just about securing a venue; it was about proving to myself that I could carve out my own space and create my own opportunities in the art world, blending creativity with business strategy.

The idea came from a frustration I felt watching other artists, including myself, struggle to gain recognition in a system where galleries and institutions act as gatekeepers. I didn’t want to sit around hoping for an invitation—I wanted to build my own stage.

I developed Black\stract, an exhibition exploring techniques and storytelling in Black abstraction—an immersive and engaging art show for Black History Month. I prepared my pitch and sent it to multiple coworking and community spaces across LA, knowing that securing a show wasn’t guaranteed. Among all the places I reached out to, the one that felt most out of reach—NeueHouse Hollywood—was the only one that got back to me.

Walking into that pitch meeting was nerve-wracking. I wasn’t just selling an idea; I was putting my creative identity on the line. But I knew that if I didn’t advocate for myself, no one else would.

I put together a deck that framed foster the studio not just as a design studio, but as a cultural incubator—one capable of creating immersive experiences that aligned with NeueHouse’s ethos. The process pushed me beyond my artistic practice; I had to think about audience engagement, marketing strategy, curation, and the financials of hosting a show.

NeueHouse saw the vision and took a chance on me, scheduling my show for early February.

That experience shifted something in me. It proved that I could take up space in rooms I once thought were out of reach. It reinforced my belief that artists—especially Black artists—don’t have to wait for permission to showcase their work.

Since then, I’ve continued creating my own opportunities, pitching my art and ideas to brands, businesses, and cultural spaces. That risk taught me that rejection isn’t failure—it’s a step forward. And every pitch, every bold ask, makes the next one easier.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

For those who may not have met me yet—my name is Miela. I’m a Harvard-trained statistician turned multidisciplinary artist, designer, and founder of foster the studio. My journey into the arts wasn’t a pivot so much as a homecoming. Raised by two Black American engineers, I grew up immersed in a deep appreciation for systems, inquiry, invention, and innovation. My mother was an avid crafter who approached creativity with an engineer’s mindset—and passed that theory of making down to me.

My hobbies were broad and exploratory. Whether I was doodling, writing poetry, performing spoken word, or preparing for academic decathlons, I approached each with a systems-level curiosity—using them as sites to explore, deconstruct, and test the limits of what was possible. I’ve always been painfully curious about the world around me, so I took a practical approach to college and studied statistics, with a focus in data science at Harvard, where I learned to uncover hidden patterns in information.

Over the course of the pandemic, I began to notice my desire for pattern-making extended far beyond numbers—I wanted to understand and map the interior world, too. That’s when art found me again.
I now work at the intersection of art, science, and cultural transformation. My practice—which I call visual poetics—uses abstraction, pattern-making, color, texture, and form to distill memory, emotion, and consciousness into layered visual languages. I see each work as an experiment in perception, a portal that collapses past, present, and future into one plane—inviting introspection, reflection, and transformation.

Through foster the studio, I expand this vision beyond the canvas. foster the studio is a multidisciplinary platform where thought, form, and feeling converge to create artifacts of spiritual and cultural evolution. A living archive of intuition, experiment, and design, we map the dimensions of the spirit—inviting individuals to time-jump across portals of histories, futures, and their own interior worlds. Each artifact serves as a window into an expansive future, fostering connection, curiosity, and reflection.

We offer a range of creative works and experiences:

Fine Art & Visual Language:
Original artworks and curated exhibitions that expand cultural narratives—blending intuition and design to open new avenues for human reflection. These visual expressions challenge our understanding of identity, spirit, and emotion.

Design as Artifact:
Collection releases—from textiles to wearable pieces to wrapping paper to household items—that embed intention and consciousness into everyday life. Each item becomes a tactile portal, translating spiritual inquiry into form.

Immersive Portals:
Transformative pop-ups and installations that bring our work into real time and space. These experiences foster connection, dialogue, and inner expansion—offering people moments to pause, gather, grow, and ultimately, transform.

Collaborations:
We partner with mission-aligned brands and creatives to push culture forward. From pattern licensing to co-created storytelling, we use collaboration as a tool to build more expansive and inclusive futures.

My work has been featured in SF Bay View newspaper and reviewed by KQED, and exhibited in galleries across California, including Root Division Gallery and NeueHouse Hollywood. Beyond the gallery, I’ve partnered with a range of small businesses to infuse a human spirit–oriented lens into their brand storytelling—bringing depth, emotion, and cultural context to the ways they connect with their audiences.

What sets me and this work apart is the commitment to both inner and collective transformation. I approach art with the rigor of a scientist, the heart of a poet, and the vision of a futurist. Everything I create is designed to invite deeper connection—with self, community, and the collective consciousness.

I’m most proud of the way this practice continues to open portals—not just for me, but for the people who engage with it. Whether someone is wearing a pattern I created, transported to a specific moment in time through one of my paintings, or stepping into an immersive installation and feeling a shift—I live for those moments when the invisible becomes seen.

For those just getting to know me or foster the studio, I want you to know that this is a space of possibility. It’s a place where art and spirit dance, teach, and transform. It’s about imagining more—more joy, more healing, more beauty, more freedom. It’s a road toward liberation. My hope is that you find a part of yourself reflected in this work—and that it sparks something greater in you.

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

One of the most important rituals in my everyday life is reading. Like I mentioned before, I’m painfully curious about the world—and I truly believe that you are what you consume. For me, education is both spiritual and intellectual power. In college, my best friend showed me that the most transformative information we can feed our minds is the kind that requires active seeking and curation. Books were her love language, and through her recommendations, I began to understand the soul-expanding potential of deeply intentional reading.

Eventually, I started building that muscle for myself. Now, I’m really proud of my ever-growing, well-worn, and well-loved personal library—each book a portal, each author a teacher.

One book I recommend to every human interested in creating work that reflects their soul is Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss. That book changed the course of my life. It taught me that being an artist—especially a multidisciplinary one—is not just about making things; it’s about understanding the metaphysical space those things come from. It reminded me that I am creating from the unseen. That my work is a channel, not just an output. And that helped me start building my artistic voice—not as a performance, but as a reflection of the inner dimensions of my spirit.

Reading Anatomy of the Spirit also shifted the way I approach entrepreneurship. It helped me move away from the external stakes of “success” and into a framework where the creative process itself is a form of knowing myself. It framed life as an ecosystem that begins with the self—every decision, collaboration, or offering stemming from alignment with that inner truth. That philosophy is the heartbeat of foster the studio: an ecosystem of artifacts that map the soul’s evolution, in public.

This approach has given me clarity in setting boundaries, in choosing collaborators, and in designing a practice that is both versatile and grounded. I know what speaks to me, and I know what doesn’t. Each book, each moment of reflection, each act of creating—these are all nodes in a greater spiritual and creative web. And I honor them as such.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I recently watched a video that explored the difference between celebrity and artist—a distinction that deeply resonated with me. The celebrity seeks the spotlight; the artist seeks truth. Somewhere along the way, society’s admiration for celebrity outpaced its reverence for artists. We began to celebrate visibility over vision, performance over purpose.

But the role of the artist has always been sacred: to seek truth, to distill experience, to hold a mirror up to the world and ask us to look deeper. Artists are cultural archivists, emotional cartographers, spirit-world interpreters. And yet, in a culture driven by constant consumption and curated performance, this function has been devalued. It’s no wonder so many artists feel exhausted, disillusioned, or invisible—we are often asked to pour from empty cups into a world that isn’t truly listening.

If we want the return of great art, we need a collective willingness to be transformed. Supporting artists is not just about buying their work or attending a show—it’s about cultivating a culture that values curiosity, reflection, and vulnerability. It’s about creating slower spaces where nuance, honesty, and experimentation can exist without the pressure of constant monetization or virality.

In my own journey, I often struggle with how to show up authentically in a world that rewards spectacle over soul. How to continue creating from a place of inner alignment, even if the external world doesn’t immediately respond. But I’ve learned this: if we truly want a thriving creative ecosystem, society has to meet artists halfway. We must become a culture that is open to the discomfort of transformation, that welcomes the unknown, that embraces nonlinear process of becoming.

Because real art doesn’t flatter—it reflects. And reflection, when done with honesty, can change everything.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mielafoster.com
• Instagram: @fosterthestudio
• Other: Substack: https://fosterthestudio.substack.com

Image Credits

Elmer Vivas