We were lucky to catch up with Xiao Lyu recently and have shared our conversation below.

Xiao, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I would say ‘sooner’, sincerely. Before diving into illustration, I’ve also been working for years as a graphic designer and gaming artist since graduating from my undergrad program at China Academy of Art, and my major back then was Visual Communication. It’s a profession with a really broad range and after graduation, I spent a long time figuring out what exactly I wanna do in so many different fields relevant to visual arts while trying my first full-time job. It’s a stressful and confusing period for me.
Because studying it is def different from taking it as your career in the future.
When we were students, schools would try to teach more and broader knowledge for us to get to know this profession, but when we started to work, the areas of focus needed to be more subdivided.
So I do wish that I could start my career earlier like in the third year of the undergrad program when I have more spare time, to try more commissioned works, develop my abilities, and apply what I learned from the academy, to see what I truly have enthusiasm for.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I first started my career as a graphic designer after my undergrad program, and to further develop my possibility I participated in different artists’ workshops and started to work as a gaming artist mainly focusing on character design and visual advertising. Along with collaborations with different companies and cases, I had more clients coming to me. Then I started to get interested in illustration. It’s also related to visual art but requires more expression and narrative. So I decided to come to the USA and pursue my MFA in illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC.

Now I provide various visual artistic expressions, ideas, and solutions, with my mixed visual language. I do different visual arts like illustrations for advertising, graphic novels, gaming art, and editorial illustration is also what I’m interested in. And ‘variety’ is what I’m proud of myself for and what my clients feel right about me. I could give multiple possibilities for their visual needs and quickly reach a consensus. Right now I’m focusing on developing a unique personal style with balanced combinations of abstract and realistic styles that I’m interested in and good at, and its flexibility is what I value.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I see my creative journey as a mode that keeps switching between the studying phases and the working phases. I also love stable jobs and life pace, but to me, studying is like charging for better and longer working ability, and to keep this endurance, self-charging is indispensable; besides making a living and gaining my own experience and sense of achievement, to me working is also like checking what I learned from the previous study to see how good the new knowledge could be applied. This switching is also like getting myself out of the work/study for a while to check them like a third-person perspective to have new realizations. This is how I have my life pace balanced

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I hope society can further break down information barriers. Some artists are good at marketing while more are not, and at the same time, some non-creatives know where to get the art or collaborate with the artists they like while some are not. Of course, agents and agencies are helpful, and more media are trying to help as well, but I think bigger powers like popular/famous organizations, and also governments are needed.

A very simple example, I’d like to see establishing more reliable third-party platforms for artists and non-creatives to provide simple, convenient, and legal guarantees for cooperation like matching platforms between artists and, for example, food stall owners, musicians, and craft artists, letting everyone find a suitable match for each other, and also letting them realize that better arts and designs are needed for significant promotions. By letting art come to life more easily and combining it with other industries and physical indie productions to further narrow the distance between artists, customers, markets, and non-creatives, allow art and other industries to help each other simply and efficiently; hold more events like Mocca Fest that truly meet the needs and preferences of artists and non-creatives, and strive to ensure that everyone can easier access to relevant information and more convenient and simple participation.

The information barriers make this still difficult for many people even though we have advanced social media, but I think it’s far from enough, more actions are still needed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://xiaolyu.art
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xiaolyuxiao
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/xiaolyuart

Image Credits
Xiao Lyu all rights reserved