by Amanda Ong

From 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m five days a week, Tori Shao works as a landscape architect. But after work and on weekends, Shao is creating artistically — whether that be making, bottling, and designing labels for small-batch hot sauce for friends, starring in a Vanity Fair video with her sister, or quite literally painting the town red as a local muralist. Since late 2019, Shao has also had a ceramics studio space as a tenant at Inscape Arts. Last year, the owners of the former Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) building — which houses Inscape — listed the building on the market, putting Seattle’s largest artist enclave at risk for redevelopment into commercial or residential spaces.