Looking out at a row of clapboard houses and an abandoned warehouse, Self’s fourth-floor studio is eerily quiet and flooded with light. The room is lined with figurative paintings stitched together with expressive black thread, as well as rough-cut wooden forms used to support three-dimensional works in progress. “I like to have the sculptures in the same room as the paintings for a good amount of movement,” she says. “It makes the space feel more activated.” Bouncing between two adjacent rooms — one dedicated to sewing intricate details and the other to cutting out large-scale sculptures — and sharing keen observations of Harlem and New Haven, Self answered T’s Artist’s Questionnaire.

What’s the first piece of art you ever made?

A stick figure. At my babysitter Mrs. Robinson’s house.

When you start a new piece, where do you begin? What’s the first step?

Usually with a drawing — either to scale on craft paper or a smaller study. I try to build out an idea with bits and pieces of scrap. If I’m working on an entire show, I’ll make sketches for each piece. It helps me think about how the works will relate to one another within the exhibition space. Once I begin working, I focus on one piece at a time.

But of course in making that one piece, I end up generating materials and debris for other works that will probably be part of the same body of work, just because of the nature of how I make the other elements.