"I love stuff and I hate feeling crowded so it's this constant battle," says artist Lorien Stern, of the renovated single-wide trailer that she lives in with her partner, Dave (of Dave’s Clubhouse), located on her family’s salvage yard in a little town called Inyokern in the Mojave Desert. "I don't have one more square foot on my wall where I could fit another painting. If I want to put something else up, I have to take something down," she says of her current small-space dilemma.
Stern’s ouevre is impressive, especially given the space where she creates her extremely varied art: She and her partner "converted old dilapidated trailers and shipping containers into our studio spaces." It’s from these redone spaces where Stern’s cartoonish mirrored ghosts, ceramic shark heads revealing all their teeth, bath mats shaped like seals and sloths, cotton tees collaged with fantastical beasts and fruits, and more emerge.
"It’s a fun way to explore something you are afraid of, by making them colorful and approachable and goofy," Stern says of the recurring themes in her work, like death or sinister creatures. "It’s kind of exciting to face your fear." And soon, the duo will be expanding their tiny corner of the Mojave once they get the "permitting for a giant space that we're gonna convert into our living space, a metal steel shop, and a business warehouse. A place where I can make a 10-foot snake and have a place to display it if I need to," Stern says of how she plans to design and utilize the property she bought next door to her home.
When it comes to the home products that Stern and her partner have outfitted their converted trailer with, the aesthetic throughline is that everything is wildly vibrant, hilarious to look at, made with artistic care (and flair!), and also highly functional—just like the stuff Stern makes. You’ll find plenty of gems inside their home made by fellow makers and close artist friends like Katie Kimmel, Dusen Dusen, and India Jacobs. "I like to surround myself with certain colors and things that make me happy. Nothing makes me feel better than to see a rainbow, as cheesy and cliche as that is, and there are a lot of good rainbows in the desert. It’s very beautiful and still," says Stern of her vast, quiet, and natural surroundings that juxtapose well with her playhouse-like wares. "I'm able to explode with my weird colors and characters here. There are a lot of snakes and lizards and great sunsets that inspire me."
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