This L.A. welder hosts coffin parties — but she does so much more to celebrate living

The coffin, a life-size wood-and-iron box, sits successful the mediate of Kate Mueller’s surviving country arsenic if successful mentation for a wake, but its intricate details — drawers, windows, an elaborate hand-carved bronze clasp and decorative bracing on the apical — hint astatine thing more.

“I tin spot that it looks highly religious,” says the 34-year-old creator and welder. “But that is not what I was going for.”

Mueller built the coffin successful 2012 during her elder twelvemonth astatine Azusa Pacific University utilizing reclaimed wood from the theatre department’s dumpster.

Mueller, 34, stands adjacent to the coffin she made successful her furnishings plan people erstwhile she was 20. “When I built it, I was surviving successful a assemblage dorm. I didn’t deliberation astir what I would bash with it. When I lived successful a four-flight walk-up successful Boyle Heights, I astir injured a person carrying it upstairs.”

Like galore assemblage seniors preparing to motorboat into adulthood, Mueller says she was “unconsciously processing the dread of leaving schoolhouse and not having a wide thought of what beingness would look like.”

In this series, we item autarkic makers and artists, from glassblowers to fibre artists, who are creating archetypal products successful Los Angeles.

Creating the coffin was a profoundly idiosyncratic and introspective travel for Mueller. Even aft 13 years, she inactive holds an affectional attachment to it, contempt lugging it up flights of stairs and transporting it each implicit Los Angeles. “That is erstwhile everything clicked successful furnishings making for me,” she says of gathering the coffin. “The biggest root of joyousness is exploring materials and trying to propulsion it successful truthful galore antithetic ways.”

The unexpected usage of the coffin arsenic a java array adds a interaction of humor. Mueller’s husband, actor-filmmaker-personal trainer Guile Branco, says they person amusive with the gothic location decor. “When the cablegram feline came, we didn’t archer him astir the coffin, and helium was shocked erstwhile helium walked into our surviving room,” helium says, laughing.

“It’s a large spot to store blankets and pillows,” Mueller adds.

Mueller was calved and raised successful Oxnard. The girl of a pastor, she grew up successful an insulated, spiritual household and was homeschooled. But adjacent a pastor’s girl tin grapple with faith.

“From a precise aboriginal age, I knew that what seemed to beryllium clicking for everyone other conscionable didn’t look to beryllium clicking with me,” she says.

She tried to beryllium religious. When she saw an online occupation posting to thatch English to a fistful of orphans and nuns successful Romania, she took the position. “I deliberation joining a monastery permitted maine to determination on,” she says. When the occupation ended, she went to Spain and walked the Camino de Santiago. “I was trying to find God,” she says of the celebrated pilgrimage. “I had a loving, spiritual upbringing, but it was complicated.”

Upon her return, Mueller moved to Los Angeles, a spot that seemed “tame and reasonable” aft her experiences successful Romania. While moving arsenic a salesperson astatine a tiny family-run furnishings store, she learned to weld and sharpen her gathering skills during disconnected hours.

“I had been a woodworker and gathering things for 2 years, but learning however to weld was a gift,” she says. “You tin physique overmuch grander things and marque them unchangeable and safe. It made maine consciousness precise powerful.”

When the store closed successful 2019, the owners gave her the welder and assorted gathering materials. While moving astatine her adjacent occupation arsenic a task manager for different creator (that gig ended this month), Mueller started welding successful her backyard successful Van Nuys.

The couple’s location is filled with Mueller’s photographs and furnishings, including stools made with reclaimed wood, broadside tables made from wood cutoffs and an A. Lietz Co. antique drafting array basal with a apical she reimagined with inlaid wood. And of course, the coffin-turned-coffee table.

Her high-backed porter chair, a chamberlike structure, features a mirrored kaleidoscope extortion that offers the spectator Kusama-esque infinity patterns erstwhile seated inside. The chair, with its intricate plan and meditative purpose, emphasizes Mueller’s quality to make unique, immersive experiences.

Sitting wrong the porter chair, which references the constellations and specifically the brightest star, Sirius, has a meditative prime and is simply a antithetic acquisition for everyone. “That’s the magic of the mirrors,” says Mueller. “That’s wherefore mirrors are tied to different astral planes successful galore antithetic cultures — they transport you to different place.”

Mueller, right, and her husband, Guile Branco, region her welded alloy sculptures astatine Dockweiler State Beach.

With the assistance of Branco, Mueller precocious started installing large-scale welded alloy geometric sculptures connected beaches successful Oxnard, Santa Monica and, astir recently, Dockweiler State Beach. For each installation, she invites the nationalist to travel and acquisition the sculptures and observe the mode they framework the water and interact with the tide.

When Mueller was increasing up, her parents would unfastened their location to whoever needed a spot to enactment during the holidays. “So implicit the years, our location has go a spot wherever we big radical connected Thanksgiving and Christmas,” she says. “When Thanksgiving was approaching this year, it seemed similar the champion acquisition for anyone coming to our location was to spell outside. So I made a picnic and invited everyone to travel to Santa Monica and acquisition my installation.”

To their surprise, truthful galore strangers connected the formation interacted with the sculptures connected Thanksgiving that they weren’t capable to permission until aft dark.

“People were having fun,” Branco says. “It’s bully to deliberation that Kate’s sculptures volition extremity up successful someone’s household photos.”

Mueller describes the interactive formation installations arsenic “a emotion missive to humanity and nature.” Some radical locomotion done them. Others instrumentality selfies arsenic the sculptures framework the sunset. A fewer person tried to bash pullups. Ultimately, however, the installations are astir connection.

“They are meant to make a consciousness of assemblage done our corporate awe of nature,” Mueller says. “It emphasizes however we are each connected. Humans person been gathering successful quality and sharing rituals since the opening of time.”

Mueller is framed wrong 1 of her metallic creations successful the backyard of her Van Nuys home.

Experiencing the changeless interplay of shapes and groups successful idiosyncratic tin propulsion you disconnected balance, according to her person and mentor, creator Leslie Lanxinger. “The happening I emotion astir Kate’s enactment is that from a distance, her structures are beautiful, but erstwhile you get close, measurement wrong her installations, determination is simply a disconcerting feeling,” says Lanxinger. “Kate has an unthinkable sensitivity with respect to her materials and the surroundings she chooses, and you consciousness a transportation heavy wrong your assemblage erstwhile you interact with her work.”

Looking to the future, Mueller dreams of installing her steel-frame sculptures on the California coastline, a task she’s dubbed “The String of Life That Connects All Things.” She besides plans to proceed making coffins.

Over the years, she has hosted respective “coffin parties,” wherever she invites guests to prevarication successful the coffin and contemplate their mortality. At her past event, which referenced the Buddhist signifier of maraṇasati, oregon a mindfulness meditation connected death, people waited successful enactment to acquisition the coffin.

“Kate is specified a unsocial creator successful the mode that her creations person the quality to link you with thing more,” death doula Jill Schock said by email. The 2 hosted a coffin party unneurotic successful September and Mueller is unfastened to hosting backstage coffin parties for others. “Whether that’s your mortality done her handmade coffins oregon the humbling aspects of quality done her delicate frames connected the beach, her enactment is genuinely spiritual.”

Mueller welds alloy successful her Van Nuys backyard.

Mueller’s adjacent porter seat volition person a crown of gnarled bamboo roots she recovered connected the formation successful Oxnard. “There volition beryllium Plexiglas, truthful if you’re sitting inside, you’ll formed airy and shadows that interact with the environment.”

Beyond that, she sees the aboriginal successful a changeless authorities of flux. “You tin number connected everything to change,” she says successful betwixt welding and sanding a alloy framework successful her backyard. It’s a connection that fills her with anticipation arsenic overmuch arsenic anxiety. “I similar reasoning of those words arsenic an antidote to my anxious mind,” she adds quietly.

In talking with Mueller, she repeatedly uses the connection “gift” to explicate her creator path, possibly partially due to the fact that seeing radical interact with her enactment has touched her profoundly.

“I’ve ne'er had radical convey maine for my creation before, and that’s what happened to maine with these installations,” she says. “I similar the thought of creating a abstraction wherever you would continually consciousness safe, nary substance wherever you are. I privation to permission that to posterity.”