Small Archway

I just spent three years building a house, and last night I had an idea that I just can’t stop thinking about. I want to put small metallic plaques all over the house, identifying each little feature as a kind of sculpture, a piece of art.

• “Small Archway / Joel A., 2010”
• “Bamboo Stair Landing With Angled Corner / Joel and Jessica A., 2011”
• “Porch Structure / Tim A., 2009”
• “Laminated Structural Beam / Joel and Tim A., 2008”

and so on.

For some reason, thinking of each part of the house as a sculpture gave me a new enthusiasm for working on it. Perhaps I had been unconsciously drained by the thought that after the place is finished, it will become just another house, that the mountain of effort that went into each element will fade and melt into what is, simply, a house, a single syllable of a thing, a background for us to live in. As Treebeard would say, that’s an awfully short word for a thing with so much significance. I like the idea that perhaps the care that went into each mitred corner and grouted tile joint might itself be memorialized into it’s own permanent feature of the house, along with attribution showing it was I who had supplied it.