I had a little art house once.

Well, I still have a little art house, but other people live in it now.

It seemed a bit silly (wasteful, really) to have a house that I didn’t spend much time in when it could serve a better purpose for someone else.  And the fact is, I’d always heard that houses will become run down if no one lives in them.  And the thought of that happening to my little art house was too much to bear.

So, for the time being, I have a little art house that other people live in.

But let me just tell you a little bit about this little house – the way it was before.

In the process of ‘renovating’ (aka gutting the house after the previous renters) the carpet had to be ripped out (down to bare floors), and the walls needed patching and painting.  It was a real mess.  With the house empty and ‘naked’ I realized that no matter what I did to it (in this state) I couldn’t mess it up any further.

This was a very liberating feeling.

I had paint.

I had ideas.

And I had time.

For the next year or so I painted, and re-painted and arranged and re-arranged… added and subtracted and subtracted and added whatever things I ran across that spoke to me – all sorts of things; crazy things – ephemera and bits and pieces and odds and ends, headless saints, and doll heads, and fairy wings, broken this and broken that, and placed them all in the house as if the house itself was a three dimensional art journal.

And, in retrospect, I guess it WAS a journal.

My journal.

I even wrote on the walls!

I miss it quite a lot, actually.

Maybe I should do something about that.