He was born in Rapid City, South Dakota where his father, Ivan Houser, was assistant sculptor to Gutzon Borglum in the early years of carving Mount Rushmore; he began working with Borglum shortly after the inception of the monument and was with Borglum for a total of seven years. When Houser left Gutzon to devote his talents to his own work, Gutzon's son, Lincoln, took over as Assistant- sculptor to his father. Encouraged in art from childhood, young Houser studied art at Lewis and Clark College, the University of California and Art Center College of Design.

He pursued two years of independent study in Europe as a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award during which time he also assisted the American sculptor, Avard Fairbanks, on an equestrian monument to the Pony Express and worked with classicist painter, R. H. Ives Gammell in Boston, Massachusetts.

In his career Houser has traveled extensively through Europe, Morocco, Mexico, Ecuador and the United States. Dedicating most of his adult life to interpreting the human condition through direct experience, he has lived and worked for extended periods among such diverse groups as the mountain people of Appalachia, the Gullah Blacks of South Carolina, The street fakirs (faquiri) of Rome, Italy, hippies of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury (1960's), Mexican and Black migrant laborers, American gypsies and Native Americans including Taos Pueblo, the Tonto Apache, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, and the Yaqui and Tohono O'odham (Papago) tribes of Arizona. In Mexico the artist lived and worked among the Seri Indians on the coast of Sonora, Mexico, the Tarahumara Indians of the Copper Canyon, Chihuahua, Mexico, the Lacandón Indians (Chiapas, Mexico), and the Aschuar Indians (Jívaro) of the Upper Amazon in Ecuador.