Inside Sculptor Dan John Anderson’s Handcrafted Desert Compound
Gazing out the window of Dan John Anderson and Genevieve Dellinger’s house in Yucca Valley, California, you might think you’re the only human being for miles. Out in the wash—those untouched swaths of public, desert land—coyotes and jackrabbits roam; creosote, a scraggly bush that perfumes the air after it rains, grows wild; and occasionally on weekends locals fly through sandy paths on four-wheelers and dirt bikes. “It’s part of what drew me to the desert,” says Anderson, a sculptor. “That openness, that psychological space. You feel more free.”
He first visited the area in 2010, when his Portland-based art collective was invited by artist Andrea Zittel to do an installation at her nearby compound, A-Z West. He fell in love with the landscape. Zittel’s experiments with living had become the crux of her practice, and that idea resonated with him. He moved to the high desert in 2012, landing a job with the sculptor Alma Allen soon after. Two years later and newly coupled up with Dellinger, a photo producer, they snapped up a 900-square-foot Yucca Valley house built in 1959.
As their family grew (Mars was born in 2016, followed by Uschi in 2019) they transformed the home bit by bit. Working with a local framer, they doubled the square footage of the house, stretching out its original shape and opening it up with more windows to the east. They dug out and framed a groovy sunken living room, which wraps around a vintage fireplace. Out back they poured a concrete conversation pit and installed a pool.
At the edge of the wash, Anderson built an open-air studio, where piles of wood—pine, cedar, oak—lie in wait to become stools, tables, or sculptures. The process varies, but typically he roughs out a form using a chain saw, a lathe, and hand tools (grinders, chisels), making sure the wood is super dry before finishing and sealing with oil and wax. Sometimes a crack gets repaired with a butterfly joint. Sometimes a “patch” is purely aesthetic. “The raw material brings its own thing to the table, and you can see what that’s doing and react to it,” he explains of his intuitive process. The results, many of which are sold at The Future Perfect and Matter, are geometric yet organic, with smooth curves you want to touch. Beyond the walls of the studio, a few of them are installed like alien totems amid the landscape.