There is an earthiness to Jessica Jackson Hutchins that is visible in her work, amalgams of furniture reclaimed from street corners and cheap art shop finds made flamboyant with decorative ceramics and plaster.

She is frank and honest, searching for clear ways to articulate her practice. Her voice is low and steady, and she speaks at a regular, reassuring pace, pausing only occasionally to play with a little rhetorical flourish or let out a guffaw.

And her art is rooted in the quotidian too. These combinations of furniture and ceramics represent domesticity; they are playful metaphors for life and womanhood, and they are tactile reminders of the beauty that exists everywhere every day.

‘I started out using papier-mâché,’ she explains, ‘because it was so readily available and it was so immediate; and that sense of immediacy and sense of touch has remained central for me. The intention with my work is to find and create meaning, and to unabashedly assume that there is meaning in the materials themselves.’  

Art was always present as she grew up in Chicago. Her mother, who died when she was 12, was an art historian who brought traders and collectors to the house. ‘She was an early scholar of African art history,’ Jackson Hutchins says. ‘She created a small collection and they were a big influence on me. I haven’t thought about them in a while but I used to make up dances with the sculpture.’

She followed the path of her mother, who had been studying for a PhD in art history at Northwestern University before her illness, and decided to study art history and English literature at Oberlin College (‘It was the first school to admit blacks and women and that is the reason I went there. It’s a cool place,’ she says).

‘I went down an academic route first and I really value that, I feel very connected to literature and art history as a discipline,’ she says, but she always ‘self-identified as an artist’ and went on to a post-graduate programme at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her 20s were a ‘tumultuous time’ and she struggled with a heroin problem but she emerged from the tangle of grief and addiction to become a successful artist and a fulfilled wife and mother of two daughters.

She is married to Stephen Malkmus, lead singer and guitarist of Pavement, a band she listened to long before they met at the wedding of a mutual friend. ‘I listened to my husband’s music a lot as a young person; it was really formative. I had the very first single. I guess it’s kind of romantic but I met him when I was old enough to not be a fangirl,’ she says. ‘I met him 11 or 12 years ago, when I was about 30.’

Their base is Portland, Oregon, a city often lampooned for its hipster-ness – ‘Portland is very centred on lifestyle,’ she admits, ‘they are going crazy about fluoride in the water right now, it’s coming up for vote and they’re going absolutely nutty-bumpers over it, it’s all anybody talks about over there’ – but they have been based in Berlin for the past 18 months.

‘We all grew as a family in Berlin; it was hard work, I had to get the kids in school, I worried about the adjustment and the foreign language and stuff but I also figured that an adjustment is good,’ she says. ‘So even though we’re going back to Portland it doesn’t mean we’re moving back permanently.’

Jackson Hutchins might not be interested in the permanent but she is, at the age of 42, absolutely engaged in the practical; whether that’s using sturdy second-hand sofas to create stylish sculpture or going about the everyday business of being a mum.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ work is included in the ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’ at the Giardini and Arsenale in Venice  until 24 November. Her piece ‘Couch for a Long Time’ will be exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London this month.