How did we get here?

The OutPost began as a showroom, store and design lab for Siemon & Salazar and United Design Club, a lighting design and glassblowing studio focusing on handblown glass created by Caleb Siemon and Carmen Salazar. It was also a chance for Caleb & Carmen find a new opportunities to engage with their Laguna Beach community. Residents since 2002, they wanted to bring their work closer to home and their two kids. The Outpost has morphed into a showroom for select S&S pieces, work made by local friends and those who are far away, Carmen’s studio for her exterior design clients and a place for Caleb & Carmen to explore new ideas.

A curious hybrid of urban and rural, Carmen is a recipe that calls for equal parts concrete and pasture, glass and steel and rough-hewn beams. She has a varied past in architecture and landscape design, sculpture, metalworking, botany, and scavenging. She is trained as a designer, sculptor, and architect, and has worked as a landscape designer on luxury estates as well on the design team for the Orange County Great Park. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture, and Art History from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Masters in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Since 2008 she has run the design studio at Siemon and Salazar and UDC with her husband and partner extraordinaire, Caleb Siemon. She believes in creating works that are beautiful and functional.  Carmen is a lover of many types of design from mid-century modernism and brutal minimalism, to baroque overabundance and hippie farm houses.

Caleb is the son of a jeweler and a painter. He grew up making things with his hands, got hooked on glass in high school, and honed his craft at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he and Carmen met. He then set out for Murano, Italy, and spent two years in the Muranese studio with Pino Signoretto, a glassmaker versatile enough to produce both enormous sculptures and delicate goblets. When he returned to Southern California in 1999, he constructed his own Italian-style glassblowing studio fueled by a passion for the medium and a desire to carry on the centuries old art. He enlisted the help of a group of friends, which included Carmen who thought she was just coming down for a visit. 20 years later…

An ever-changing collection of visiting artists helped shape the studio’s design and approach which reflected the evolved craftsmanship of the Muranese tradition coupled with the balance and restraint of the Scandinavians and still embraces the collaborative mindset. After two decades in their Santa Ana studio, the duo sold the workshop and Siemon & Salazar to their friends at Cerno. They continue to design work for the brand and enjoy working with the team at Cerno as the new stewards of S&S.

The Outpost will continue to showcase selected works from Siemon & Salazar as well as unique explorations by Caleb & Carmen and their friends. Feel free to peek in the windows and please email us with any questions or if you would like to make an appointment.