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I’m wrapping up my conversation with artist and creative director Maps Rasmussen (who uses they/them pronouns) about their home in Los Angeles’s Glassell Park when talk turns to porcelain clowns. At one point after moving in, their collection was corralled on three shelves opposite the tub in a color-drenched yellow bathroom, one that Rasmussen and a close friend had tiled together (more on that later). Instead of poodles, their current obsession, “ there were just clowns, clowns, clowns,” Rasmussen says. One day, “I heard a big bang and the whole shelving unit had fallen down, and every single clown crashed into 1,000 pieces.” Instead of mourning the loss, they decided to use the shards in a sculptural work.
There’s no better introduction to not only Rasmussen’s generative spirit and practice, but also their perspective on the act of making and remaking, of constantly reimagining, a home. It was from that vantage point that Rasmussen resolved to find living quarters where they could invite other artists to live and make work with and around them, back in 2016. “I was thinking about community and just how I can share it,” they note. “Having a sacred space that felt really safe for people to be in.”
They fell in love with the hillside property in East L.A., covered in plants and shaded by old-growth trees. The 444-square-foot house, not so much. The initial idea was to make a few upgrades, bring things up to code, and call it a day. But, after acquiring permits and a construction loan, Rasmussen says a can of worms was opened: “What I thought would be a little renovation turned into a very big, almost complete tear-down.”
By that point, the artist was already living in a vintage 10-foot trailer parked under a carport next to what eventually would become their studio. Armed with binders worth of references, Rasmussen got together with an architect friend to draft up plans for the rebuild. Beyond a strong connection to the outdoors, they had a few nonnegotiables: big windows, a rooftop deck, a sunken bathtub, and built-in reading nook. “I got really excited about getting to design every nook and cranny of this space,” they note. (The rooftop deck is still coming. “Eventually I’ll get to that.”)
During the construction process, the trailer was feeling tight, so Rasmussen tapped another pal to help them erect an elevated one-room cabin perched above the main house. Tiered garden beds followed, all while the main house was slowly coming into focus. Rasmussen leaned in, installing bathroom floors, jack-hammering the second bedroom, and building furniture. “It felt like an art project,” they say. “There’s an intimate relationship to materials when you’re building and making something, and I felt that with this house.”
That bathroom floor was indeed a work of art. After giving a friend free reign to design the tile (the only brief:glaze it in white and blue), Rasmussen didn’t receive your standard squares or rectangles. “She had this handwritten, mad genius note that showed every tile—I mean, there were hundreds of pieces—and each was like a puzzle piece,” they recall. “She made it into this massive undertaking, and it’s just so beautiful.” Obviously, the only wall color that could do it justice was a contrasting ochre yellow.
The original structure’s footprint became the framework for the kitchen. The cabinets were supposed to be outfitted with butcher block countertops, but Rasmussen quickly realized it skewed too dark and opted for white stone instead. Similarly, all the upper cabinet fronts and tilework is white, a refreshing departure from the plywood-and-maple lowers and wood pegboard wall. That space opens up to the living room, where a built-in sofa lines the wall. The chartreuse cushions come off to reveal tons of storage for old art and keepsakes—plus a retreat for her beloved former cat Auto via a hidden door.
Paired up with a contractor who was willing to work with their “creative impulses,” Rasmussen tapped their own background in set design to find inventive solutions to do the things that were out of their price range. Take the lighting: Instead of splurging on expensive fixtures, the duo collaborated on ceiling cut-outs that would be home to LED fluorescents (peep one above the bedroom’s projector screen). All of the doors were also custom made, as was the built-in bookshelf made of large, deep cubes of wood; some are open to the living room and others are open to the second bedroom, a sort of peekaboo Tetris. “I like play and playfulness,” they say. “I’m not interested in sterile minimalism.”
With its verdant view, the window above Rasmussen’s bed looks more like framed artwork, but their bathroom is an even bigger showstopper. An electric blue concrete floor gives way to a sunken tub that’s flanked by nearly floor-to-ceiling windows and a floating vanity with concrete countertops. Installing those windows, the artist says, wasn’t just about filling the space with light, but also providing a sense of freedom, of security with who they, and the other people living there, are.
Throughout the home, there’s a sense of fluidity and openness, the gallery-white walls creating a backdrop for ever-changing ideas and evolution. “Being an artist, I always want to allow room for things to transform,” Rasmussen says. Even when that means moving on from a caboodle of clowns to a medley of poodles.