Creative Spaces: People, Homes, and Studios to Inspire

INTRODUCTION

THIS IS NOT SIMPLY AN INTERIORS BOOK, but a celebration of creatives, their work, and their spaces, and an inquiry about their personal and professional philosophies. A creative space can be a home, a studio, or any inspiring environment. A creative’s space is a living and breathing thing, evolving and reflective of its occupants. The definition of a creative is open to interpretation and debate, but this book focuses on artists, designers, cooks, writers, musicians, educators, architects, entrepreneurs, and others who strive to live artful, intentional lives, and explores the relationships these creatives have with their spaces.

Poketo’s story can be told through various spaces. In 2012, while searching for a new and bigger workplace, we happened upon an empty storefront not far from our loft in the Arts District in Los Angeles. At 4,000 square feet, it was nearly four times larger than our loft, offering us a considerable amount of room to grow. But this was a big and frightening step for us. The rent was higher, the space was larger than what we needed, and the neighborhood was in a state of transition, still a bit of a ghost town offering very little foot traffic. What we did like was that this was a ground-floor unit; we would be able to put our sign on the street. We could open a Poketo retail store and the community space we had always dreamed of. So, despite our trepidation, we signed the lease, moving our entire operation into the new location.

We designed the office and retail store ourselves, erecting partial walls to separate the large space in two. We constructed custom retail fixtures on casters, allowing us the ability to reshape the store depending on the art show or event. We frequently hosted art events, talks, and creative workshops to engage and inspire our community, and now we had the room to organize the space according to the needs of the event rather than the other way around.

Our home life is very different, however. People assume our home is filled with beautiful furnishings and design objects—things you would easily find at Poketo. But when we leave Poketo for the day, we come to a home that’s minimal, almost bare except for a very few items from our travels and friends. All the walls are white; there is no visible artwork displayed on the walls. We want a respite from looking at objects and thinking about design and colors all day long. We do have objects and furniture from designers we admire in our home, like the outdoor chairs by Sean Knibb and the beautiful ceramics by Tracy Wilkinson. Each of these things reminds us of our creative community, our friendships, and the value that creativity brings to our lives and spaces.

When we started Poketo in 2003, our first place was a tiny studio apartment in San Francisco across from Dolores Park. Poketo began as a side project shoehorned between the demands of work and school. We’d attend our friends’ art shows, where countless examples of beautiful work would draw crowds at the opening but wouldn’t sell. The observation inspired an idea: What if we could create something representing their work to carry everywhere around with you at a price anyone could afford? So we began making wallets with our friends’ artwork. We ended up launching and selling out that first batch of wallets at an art show. Gradually, that first product turned into hundreds more, giving birth to our guiding principle of accessible, utilitarian, and beautiful designs for art everyday.

After Angie finished art school, we decided to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles into Ted’s parents’ home for a year, where we focused all of our time and energy into growing this side project into a full-time job. Focusing solely on Poketo allowed us to source manufacturing in Los Angeles in order to add many new Poketo designs. A year later we bought our first home in Echo Park, news eliciting an unforgettably gleeful response from Ted’s parents: We get our house back, we get our house back!

Our first home was modest, with a tiny kitchen, two small bedrooms, and a large master bedroom. Best of all, it had two large garages, perfect for storing all our goods. We ended up converting the master bedroom into the office, where we’d work many long days, but boxes of Poketo inventory multiplied, aggressively taking over our living room and office. Since we lived and worked in the same place, we lost any separation between home and work life. Artist friends—the types used to the craziest, most makeshift industrial live/work conditions—often would look around our house and ask us, How do you live like this? That’s when it dawned on us that we needed to find another place for work.

In 2007, we moved our office into the top floor of an airy loft in the Arts District, the most eastern part of Downtown Los Angeles. We were now able to establish a real separation between work and home, affording us more opportunities for hosting events and the ability to hire a full-time staff of five to help us with our growing business. But as quickly as relief arrived, our once airy and immaculate loft again turned into a monster mess.

In 2012, recognizing we had outgrown our space yet again, we opened our first shop nearby in a burgeoning section of the Arts District, establishing Poketo not only as a brand, but also as a retail destination. Numerous awards and best-shops features in L.A. lists, as well as in Wallpaper* and Monocle’s travel guides, soon followed. By 2018, we had opened several stores across Los Angeles. Each of our spaces has evolved over the years. In hindsight, we can see how each Poketo space closely mirrors a moment in our lives.

This book explores the connection between individuals and space, whether that space is a home, studio, or both. In writing this book, we discovered everyone is in a state of work in progress. A home, studio, or office of a creative is rarely static; it changes perpetually as needs, inspirations, and desires arise. We are all constantly in flux—a sign of growth, both personally and professionally.

Our spaces reflect our personal joys, hopes, dreams, evolution, work, inspirations, and aspirations in operating Poketo. There’s a poster hanging in the home/studio of set designer Adi Goodrich and director Sean Pecknold that sums up everything we’ve learned over the years: Everything yields to diligence. So true. Every person featured in this book epitomizes an ultimate work ethic; their persistence and perseverance are hallmarks of their success and happiness, and their inspiring homes and work spaces are reflective of the journey as well as the destination.

We made an intentional decision to make our home the opposite of our work life.

SONOKO SAKAI

COOKING TEACHER AND AUTHOR

Highland Park, Los Angeles