Fragile, vulnerable, otherworldly…meet Miso’s delicate cast of characters

“I’m a perfectionist,” sayd Miso of her meticulously-crafted, otherworldly sculptures and paintings, “and it drives me crazy to the point where I don’t get any sleep. I’m pretty much an insomniac. I have weird ideas always going on in my head and I have to work.” She creates small figures and fantastic characters so believable that they begin to take on a life of their own.

Miso is the nom de plume of Los Angeles photographer Karen Hsiao. Karen makes dark, haunting photographs; Miso carves, casts, and paints warmer, though still mysterious, figures and images. Miso adopted her second identity a few years ago to avoid confusion—those interested in her photographs tend to be attracted to fetish—but the duality resonates with her project. “I like the idea that what goes on in my head, people can also see and experience,” she says, and her invented name immediately blurs the line between imagination and actuality.

A Los Angeles native and a graduate of Art Center, Miso initially thought she would pursue entertainment. But her time in art school convinced her that the studio and gallery life suited her better. She became enamored by the craft involved in sculpting and rendering and she realized she was the type who could spend days obsessing over every detail. She began exhibiting work in 2007.

Miso recently finished the work for her upcoming show at Corey Helford Gallery, A Cold Return. “I’m loosely basing things on global warming but I’m not trying to be political about it,” she says of the exhibition. “I’m fascinated by the ice age and the extinction of animals during that time and also the talk of the polar bears being extinct in thirty years.” Her figures, often vulnerable and dependent on their environments, sometimes resemble strange sheep-like specimens. Then there are what Miso calls “white marshmallow creatures with horns,” and a recurring character, a rabbit girl who has long hair that covers her eyes and a posse of bats that take care of her. “She needs her little friends to pull her hair up. They’re like her sight.”

A Cold Return opens in January, and then Miso will decide what to next. Eventually, she wants to bring all of her characters into three-dimensions, and she'll continue to take a meticulous, methodical approach to her work. "It almost makes it seem that my characters do exist," she says. —Catherine Wagley / Hurley Art