Living in 12 square feet is one of my more economic uses of space, but it's not a new thing for me. I've had this micro-lifestyle addiction since I was 17 when I took out the back seat of my '56 Buick Century, so i could sleep in it, (and fit my surfboard inside,) and hung American flags in the back windows for curtains. Since that modest beginning, I have built little homes that move in a wide variety of vehicles. There was Bosco, my 1952 Ford Panel truck. I didn't know much about building then, and noticed that some of my cabinets didn't stand upright very well...it was then i discovered the concept of diagonal bracing. After that, things stayed together better. I had 5 vw busses that I converted into moving homes...a couple of which had raised roofs and wood stoves. Then there was my beloved Divco milk truck. It was a 1955 that looked more like it was designed in the 30's...they are the milk trucks you always see in movies or on tv...very rounded nose, telephone booth style folding doors, rivets all over....cool as hell. As was my usual style, I cut off the roof, raised it, added portholes, took off the back doors and extended it 16 inches with cottage style woodwork and a shingle roof that had moss on it....when it rained the moss got thicker and greener. I added a tiny marine two-burner wood cook stove, and a pyramid shaped sleeping loft over the cab with a folding, counterweighted ladder that lead up to it. There was a deck on the roof with a little turned post railing around the edge. The kitchen cabinets were incense cedar and the sink was hand-thrown stoneware with a brass spigot from an old beer tap. It had a lattice window on one side and my very first stained glass window, (a sunrise) across the back. I lived and traveled in "Divy", as she was affectionately known, with my then two year old son and his mom. When we needed more room for the little rugrat to crawl around the rug, we sold Divy and bought a 1946 International school bus. It was sitting in an empty lot with it's beautiful huge front fenders and bug headlights, enormous hood, big grill with a vine growing out of it. On the back it said, "JESUS LOVES YOU". It was being sold by a church and we fell instantly in love with it. As usual, I cut off the roof, cut off the back end, (no offense intended to Jesus) and raised the roof with long Douglas fir poles that I bent into arches and bolted to each window post. Staying with the pole-framed motif, I added dormers with a loft in the back that curved around toward the front of the bus, framed with poles, and held together with fluted dowels. Then a cantilevered loft for the kid was built over the hood, and I added numerous little dormers, skylights, a stained glass window, a full sized wood cookstove with warming ovens, french doors in back, a madrone kitchen counter with another hand thrown stoneware sink and a rocking chair. Our little family lived and traveled in "Rosie LLama", (named after a baby goat) for several years...it was a storybook, "wind in the willows" sort of life. Other micro-nomadic homes came after that, several more in full sized vans and mini vans, and I built several house-busses for other people. One favorite that rivaled my current bicycle gypsy caravan in size was a 1949 vw bug, (yes, I said bug,) that I removed all the seats from, except for the driver's seat, and built up the floor to level it. Once you do that, there is a surprising amount of room in an old bug. Lots of headroom and the space from the front of the front seat to the back is long enough and wide enough for a comfy bed, which was a very padded Tibetan rug that doubled as a sitting area. Along the back, beneath the little window I built a bookshelf, clothing cabinet and behind the drivers seat, along the side rear window I put in a tiny counter with a little stove. I added a macrame' plant hanger with a Javanese purple velvet plant that hung from the rear view mirror, (which unfortunately met an untimely and gruesome death when it got burned to death on a particularly hot day). I hung bunches of herbs to dry from the ceiling. It had a little herb and spice rack with glass bottles mounted at the back of the kitchen counter. I use to pick up hitchhikers and they were always amazed when they got in at how big it seemed inside. I would park it at the store and, inevitably, when I came out there would be a crowd of people around it peeking inside and laughing and pointing. On the outside, in 8 inch high letters, I copied a passage in the original Sanscrit from the Bagavad Gita which, roughly translated meant, "We are unmanifest in the beginning, manifest in our interim state, and unmanifest again when we are annihilated, so what reason is there for lamentation?" Somehow, that just spoke to me. In later years I built some micro-houses on flat bed trailers, with high ceilings, clerestories for lots of light, and spacious lofts. When I lived in Maui, at one point I had a t-shirt painting studio in my Honda squareback, with and airbrush and CO2 tank to power it. What compels me to build and live in these micro-dwellings? I think it's that I love the idea of home, but I get a bit nervous when they are affixed to the ground...it's such a commitment to one spot. So I build homes that move. I love creating a small space and seeing how spacious I can make it feel...how efficiently I can make everything work. Usually the entire time I'm living in one of my nomadic homes, I'm tweeking and redesigning to make things work ever better.
So my point, (and I do have one,) is that although most folks I encounter think my little home, and my lifestyle, is very unusual...it doesn't seem unusual to me...it seems pretty much like normal. I guess it only makes sense that the paintings I am selling most of right now are miniatures. I carry paintings up to 16x20, but it's the little ones that are currently the most popular...and that's working for me in an interesting way. It only takes an hour or two for each one, so it allows me to try out lots of different ideas without a big commitment of time on one piece. It also allows me to carry quite a few in a very small space. So I can sit in my micro-caravan, painting micro-paintings, and drinking a micro-brew. (Someday I gotta do this in Micronesia just to continue the theme.)
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