Ariel Cotton (2014)

Artist Ariel Cotton operates in a world of her own design. She keeps her own hours, works remotely, and tinkers with her projects at all other times of the day. Suffice it to say, establishing this arrangement is no easy feat. Paving roads off the beaten path calls for a unique combination of ingenuity, creativity, and courage (Nine-to-five work-week? No, thank you.) And for a newly graduated college student with big dreams and a modest budget, the challenge is tenfold.

So, she decided to make do with her dining room as a temporary studio.

It’s the first space you enter in her Brooklyn apartment-share, down a long, narrow corridor lined on either side with paintings both old and new. At first glance the space reads like a mixed storage unit of art supplies and miscellaneous widgets; but upon closer inspection, it’s obvious the room really is home to the inner-workings of Cotton’s imagination.

“This place is very important to me,” she explains. “I have a tendency to find associations in everything in general — from the fine arts to web design to interactive art. This is where I work.”

Read the full profile on HuffPost Culture and Arts.