WITH YVONNE MOUSER
BEHIND THE SCENES WITH YVONNE MOUSER
Yvonne Mouser is an Oakland based artist, designer, and builder whose work spans furniture design, product, spaces, fine art, and events. We had the chance to visit Yvonne and chat with her about her work and inspiration.
We commissioned Yvonne to build custom furniture for our Los Altos Crafted Modern project — a daybed integrated into her ladder shelf furniture concept. Her philosophy, synergetic to Form + Field’s, is rooted in creating functional, utilitarian works as tools for storytelling and engaging with the environment.
Artist Yvonne Mouser
Image credit / Yvonne Mouser
Q: Can you share a highlight from working on recently commissioned projects? What were some challenges you faced, if any?
A: I’m working on a suite of orchard ladder inspired furniture pieces [for Form + Field] that includes a wall of shelving, a daybed and a desk. It’s been fun to revisit and expand the family of pieces.The challenge and also the pleasure of the process is the repetition and obsessiveness of joinery, as the structures are composed of hundreds of half-lapped joints.
Q: What do you enjoy most about working on commissioned projects?
A: I love a prompt, which is like a puzzle for each client’s unique needs. These outside requirements can push work in new directions through collaborative exploration.
Q: If you were a piece of furniture what would you be?
A: A swing. It’s simple, active, often connected to a tree, living outdoors, moving in one direction and then the opposite, motivated by movement and creating joy.
Q: Which living person do you most admire and why?
A: One person I admire is Laurie Anderson. She’s an artist of many mediums who expresses deep feelings through her work. I am always inspired when I hear her speak and admire artists like her, who devote their lives to exploring what it is to be human through creation and finding new ways of expressing it in their work.
Q: If you weren’t a designer and craftsperson, what would you be?
A: If I hadn't been so drawn to making physical things I might have pursued movement as a dancer.
Q: Which book or film has changed your way of thinking?
A: It’s been many years since I read it, but I remember 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez capturing my imagination through the absurd and magical stories that seemed to simultaneously capture some deep expressiveness of truth. It opened me up to ways of seeing poetry in the world.
Yvonne’s grandfather’s desk in her Oakland studio. Image credit / Yvonne Mouser.
Q: What is the most treasured object in your own home?
A: The first thing that comes to mind, partly because of its scale, is my grandfather’s desk, which he worked at for decades. I have pictures and memories of him seated in front of it. Its design was specific to the animation studio he worked at and where he ran the titles department for over 30 years. It has a drafting light table, integrated upper shelves, pin up board, and deep drawers on each side that pull out to reveal other drawers and compartments specific to its original function. It’s massive and heavy but I put it on wheels so I can easily move it as needed.
Photograph of Yvonne’s grandfather sitting at his desk. Image credit / Yvonne Mouser.
Q: What are your aspirations for the next 3-5 years?
A: I’d like to carve out more space for adventurous object making to produce speculative pieces and new bodies of work. I have many concepts and early experiments that just need time and attention to be fully realized.
Q: What motto or mantra do you try to live by?
A: Follow joy and intuition.
Q: What advice do you have for an aspiring artist/maker?
A: Focus on persistence and follow through over notions of perfection.
Keep scrolling for more photos from our visit to Yvonne’s studio.
Form + Field Team Becca (left) and Claire (middle) visiting Yvonne (right) in her Oakland workshop.
Claire checking out the custom desk for our Los Altos Crafted Modern clients.
The many shelves of Yvonne’s custom ladder shelf.
A close up of Yvonne’s joinery work.
One of several ladders Yvonne crafted for our project.
The daybed that will be integrated into the ladder shelf concept.