To spin the phrase, one person’s discarded ceramic castings are another’s art supplies—which is true for Aaron Glasson. A recent piece by the New Zealand–born artist, Monument, is a patchwork of brick, tile, and more ephemera he sourced from abandoned buildings in Shigaraki, Japan. “I make a lot of bricolage sculpture, which is the use of found objects,” Aaron tells me at his cabin in Landers, near Joshua Tree, California. “I think that ethos kind of came across in the construction of the house, too.”

The part-time home and artist residency he created with friend and fellow artist Prescott McCarthy, in fact, started with a found object of sorts: a circa-1956 homestead cabin with a dust-caked exterior “that you could never re-create,” says Aaron. After buying the property in 2020, he and Prescott updated it as if it were a piece of bricolage art, introducing secondhand elements found, gifted, and purchased to create something greater than the sum of their parts.

Prescott has since moved on, but Aaron has now added a studio with another sleeping area to the property, among other improvements. Today he hosts artists to share the Mojave Desert’s quietude and what creativity it may inspire, using the land as home base between exhibitions in Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Japan, where he used to live. As a trickle of piano music leaks from a hidden speaker in the kitchen, Aaron shares how his and Prescott’s cabin took shape, piece by piece.

Grandpa’s Cabin

When Prescott and I bought the property, it was pretty cleaned up. It was called Grandpa’s Cabin by the sellers. It’s a homestead cabin, and I think their grandfather used it as a getaway. There are a lot of them in the area, and some are really derelict, but this one had good bones.

Prescott and I had no plan. We pulled up the carpet not knowing what was underneath, and the whole concrete floor was crazily cracked, so we had it repoured. We replaced some of the drywall, keeping as much of the original as we could. The redwood ceiling beam was completely covered—we didn’t even know it was there. We pulled out the kitchen, added a door, and ripped out the bathroom, too.

Piece by Piece

From the beginning, we wanted something sculptural feeling. For me, I wanted to feel the language of my artwork in the house. I designed the cabinet fronts in the bedroom, for example. For the bathroom vanity, we started with a piece of wood we found in the street, then we earth cast the sink. We literally dug a hole in the sand, put the wood in the bottom of the hole, glued an upside-down bowl to a pipe, poured concrete inside, and then lifted out the negative. So it has a “live edge,” for lack of a better term.

“The proximity to nature and how that can inspire work has been really influential on me, and I think everyone who comes here gets inspired by it.”
—Aaron Glasson, resident

A lot of the stuff we did super-low budget. We tried to get as much as we could for free or cheap or repurposed. The ceiling is made of offcuts from a cabinetmaker that we bought for twenty dollars. A friend made the shelves in the bedroom, kitchen, and art studio out of a redwood that had fallen in Balboa Park, in San Diego.

East Meets West

I lived in Japan for four years and go back every year because I have a relationship with a gallery there now. So I think there are Japanese aesthetics and inspiration behind the home as well. I know it’s an overused term, but there’s a wabi-sabi-ness to it. Also, in Japan, they’re really good at making small spaces feel big, and I think that came through. The dining table is tiny, but it’s enough for four people.

Space for Creation

When I’m not here, I use it as an artist residency. A lot of the artworks in the house are made by artists who have stayed here. I think this place provides a clear minded–ness, which is reflected in the name, Jana Koya. Jana, if you google it, there are so many different meanings, but in Buddhism it’s a concept related to meditation, and then there’s an old Arabic term in which it means “paradise.” And then koya is Japanese for “shack” or “shanty.”

I think it’s a give-give thing: I think artists get a lot by staying here, but I also hope they can give a little to the community when they’re staying here as well. Everyone can approach their stay here differently. It sounds kind of corny, but the external spaciousness kind of gets reflected internally and comes out in what people make here. There’s a nonclutteredness to the environment that is very conducive to thinking. There’s less noise here, literally and figuratively.

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Construction Diary: How Two Artists Turned a Cabin Outside Joshua Tree Into a Clear-Minded Retreat