A View From the Easel returns with the 356th entry, spotlighting artist Lara Saget, whose New York workspace accommodates large-scale projects in glass, stone, and paint. A View From the Easel frames how her studio, practice, and community intersect.
A View From the Easel: how long in this space
Saget has worked in this studio since 2018 and has maintained studio practice since 2013.
Describe an average day in your studio
Preparation is part of the work. She begins with meditation and exercise, typically arriving by late morning.
Multiple projects run in parallel across dedicated stations: painting, glass, a rock room, and a catch-all area for experimental pieces, including large inflatable trees. She usually listens to music.
After years of podcasts, she now often plays satsang recordings from her spiritual teacher while painting. She is pursuing a Master of Divinity at the Center For Religion and Advanced Spiritual Studies.
For heavy lifting, whether machinery or stones, she switches to energetic music.
How does the space affect your work?
Ample light and room enable her preferred large scale. She recalls early years working without a studio and using hazardous materials in unsuitable settings, a practice she no longer follows.
She says proper personal protective equipment and a freight elevator capable of moving thousands of pounds are essential since her rocks, stones, and glass pieces can be very heavy. The studio’s features make the work possible.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
Her building houses many artists, fostering daily exchange. After nearly two decades in New York, she values the community she has built.
Glasswork is inherently collaborative, often requiring several artists at once, which has connected her with highly skilled practitioners. Working across materials such as stone, glass, and metal has led to learning alongside specialists who have become long-term friends.
What do you love about your studio?
She moved in after completing graduate studies at NYU in 2018 with five classmates. Together they constructed walls, storage, a gallery, and a kitchen.
Over time, as others moved on, she expanded to occupy about two-thirds of the space. She created a dedicated room for rocks, stones, and ancient relics used in her work, fulfilling a childhood dream.
The “rock room” is her favorite area. A mini trampoline, a fixture in her studios, reminds her to keep the process playful.
What do you wish were different?
She would prefer more square footage, a common refrain in New York, though she is grateful for what she has.
What is your favorite local museum?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, particularly its ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic sculpture galleries. She enjoys visiting at opening and near closing time.
What is your favorite art material to work with?
Glass. She notes its ambiguous state as an amorphous solid or a liquid, appreciating that transformation is intrinsic to the material, which makes it feel alive.
For more on the art world, see Elizabeth Holmes meme gets an art-world spin.