With controversial AI creations around so many corners, itโs refreshing to see an analogue project like DREAMHOUSES come along. Thought up by Fort Makers and stemming from the idea of vivid pandemic-induced dreams, the project is an online exhibition of abstract fantasy homes. Six artists and designers created their own โdream houseโ before being paired up with writers, who then used the creations as a prompt for an accompanying text work. The catch was that participants could only use materials that were available in their actual homes. The result is a digital neighborhood that explores the idea of what a home is to the creators.
โThe past few years have forced us to radically reconsider our relationships with our homes, coming to realize that it is where our imagination comes together with reality: we create spaces in our own image while making sure they also serve our quotidian needs,โ says Fort Makers Co-Founder Nana Spears. โWith this project, we wanted to see what would happen if the artist is free to eschew the practical part of this equation and create a space of pure fantasy,โ adds Co-Founder Noah Spencer.
โParallel House,โ created by the duo at CHIAOZZA, features a horseshoe-style layout of two houses. With an all-white exterior and interior full of brightly-colored objects, the design takes advantage of indoor/outdoor living spaces. Entirely modeled of construction paper, this modern piece of architecture is ready for the California desert.
Janelle Zara wrote โImagining Life Inside CHIAOZZAโs Dreamhouse, Which Iโm Sure Exists in LAโ in response.ย โIn my dream house, time is an illusion, a social construct; here adherence to time is 100 percent a choice. There are no clocks, no scheduled zoom meetings, only the movement of light and shadow as the sun traces its path along the sky. Throughout the year, from day to day, this movement is never fixed; the day stretches and contracts according to the seasons.โ Read it in full here.
Harry Nurievโs immersive work likes to blur the line between actual and virtual realities, so it makes sense that โOff The Roadโ would follow suit. The 3D rendering uses his signature cobalt blue to highlight a canopy bed set in a green meadow. Once the sky dims, an otherworldly light of its own turns on.
In โSense Index Zero,โ Drew Zeiba dives into what we feel like when alone in the comfort of our homes and the color blue. โOne can feel blue; blue is not something one wants to feel. In Maggie Nelsonโs obsessive catalogue of the color, Bluets, she writes, โLoneliness is solitude with a problem.โ Soot lands on my tongue as a reminder that there are things I cannot control, that home is not the shape of a globe, that there is no edge. The world escapes. I am beneath a sky of my own making as words crystalize carbon gray against my teeth. I shed description: I become primary.โ Read it in full here.
Artist Laurie Simmons, explorer of nostalgia, gender, and consumerism, created โSparkle House.โ A sparsely furnished Victorian mansion of sorts, its personality comes from the patterned textiles used throughout its rooms โ including the sparkling rugs that come to life when hit with light.
Undeniably a great setting, Natasha Stagg wrote โNowhere to sitโ in accompaniment. The short story tells of a group of roommates, their various personalities, and the dynamics that exist in such situations. โThe couch was so unlike the image when it arrived. All of the roommates looked at it, delivered and out of the box, the first new piece of furniture they had bought as a group. It was supposed to be what brought the room together, a luxurious blue velvet thing. They should have known, they all thought, that cheap velvet would look it, giving away more than what their second-hand or inherited furniture did.โ Read it in full here.
โSunshine Daydreamโ was brought to life by Fort Makers Co-Founder, wood sculptor, and painter Noah Spencer. The tiny mixed-media hut features a single unfurnished room that can move across the accompanying desert landscape with you โ almost like a pet.
Critic and essayist Philippa Snow wrote โIthacaโ in extension.
โIthaca, whose name was actually Jane, had dropped out of her Creative Writing MFA to start a new life in the desert, where sheโd planned to write a novel, drop some acid, and behave exactly like the kind of white girl who called things her โspirit animal.'โ Read it in full here.
Populated with non-binary figures, Marcel Alcalรกโs โCorner Studio Girliesโ uses glazed ceramic figures against a cardboard city painted red to share alternative expressions of queerness. It was photographed in the corner of Alcalรกโs studio, which is also the pieceโs namesake.
Whitney Mallet explored the hectic, playful yet dark, โCorner Studio Girliesโ and wrote #Justiceforglitter. The piece revolves around Mariah Carey, 9/11, and the movie Glitter. โAnd while Iโm not suggesting that sabotaging the vehicle intended to catapult Carey into cinema stardom played a role in Al Qaedaโs attack schedule, it has been documented that Osama Bin Ladenโs preferred five-octave-range songstress was Whitney Houston.โ Read it in full here.
Like something out of a fairytale, ceramicist Sam Harvey created a single tower. Covered in light blue shingles and waving a flag reading โhaving no idea as to what it all meant he chose to stay home,โ your imagination just might run wild.
Poet, writer, and curator Rash Nikol interpreted the tower into words, perhaps as a link to another world, in โWaiting Room for Spirits.โ โthe wise ones speak of the spirit house / here and there / our ancestors speak of a place there / a holding room for spirits / outside of skin / not far from clouds.โ Read it in full here.
To learn more about DREAMHOUSES, visit dreamhouses.fortmakers.com.