Last week I submitted my first ever proposal for a solo art exhibit of my small wooden house sculptures. It was a long time coming. First, I had to actually build the houses, all of which were inspired by places I have either lived in or repeatedly dreamed about. For example, “Stilt House” is a tall, rickety house I lived in when I was in grad school. “Singlewide” is the mobile home I rented on a horse farm in Chickamauga. My most recently completed house is called “The Discovered Room.” It’s based on a recurring dream about discovering a room in my house I never knew was there. For me, this dream is about finding hope and possibility where before I saw only finiteness.

In preparation for building the houses, I first took two half-day tutorials. Then, when I was certain I had no idea what I was doing, I amassed a tiny cache of power tools, including a table saw, a chop saw, and a nail gun, all of which I was (and am) afraid of to varying degrees.

Once I had my collection of scary power tools, I set to work making the box-like forms. They are held together using either tiny nails, glue or both. Nothing fits together perfectly, because I don’t measure anything, because, math. Instead, I estimate the lengths and widths of things I need to cut by either eyeballing the wood, or by pressing non-measuring instruments into service (a shaky finger, a stub of chalk). Sometimes I just rely on good old-fashioned ESP to tell me what I need to know, the same way I did in high school geometry class (with pretty much the same results). Just FYI, these measuring techniques are fine if what you are building doesn’t require a hint of accuracy, but if it does, then I have two words for you: math.)

While the noisy tools and the cutting were scary, crafting the proposal to submit to art centers was not. All that was required there was that I write about the concept behind my house sculptures, which, in a nutshell, is this: the houses we live in (or are drawn to) reflect our feelings about ourselves. As part of the proposal, I had to include what’s called an artist statement, which, when I Googled “artist statement,” I discovered is a declaration about who you are as an artist, and why you choose to work the way you do with the materials you work with. Only (and this is important) you are to write this declaration using words no one has ever heard of, and you must include concepts about art and design that are nonsensical and contain very few vowels.

Which was not a problem for me, because I have been a writer for a very long time, and if there is anything I know how to do well, it’s to write things that sound completely plausible using words and concepts that do not exist.

In other words, compared to the house building, the proposal was a breeze. I wrote it in under three weeks. Once I was finished with it, I rewrote it sixteen more times over the course of eighteen more weeks, and then I had some popcorn and some gum, and rewrote it twice more. Finally, I sent it out to the first fine art center I had identified as a possible good match.

Then I sat back and reveled in the glory that was a completed-and-submitted solo art exhibit application. Oh, the satisfaction!

Two days later, while having some more popcorn and gum, I had a horrible realization: I had failed to include images of the houses with my proposal. There was no way for the curator to know what my art pieces actually looked like. This is like walking down the aisle at the wedding you have been planning for well over half your life and forgetting you don’t have a fiancé. Or showing up for a job interview lugging the corpse of the last boss you killed. What I’m saying is, there are lots of ways to ruin your chances at success, and forgetting to send images to an art exhibit curator is one of them.  

“What should I do?” I asked my husband, who is no stranger to art exhibits and curators.

“Just make a joke of the oversight and send the images,” he said.

But I wasn’t feeling funny, so I just sent the images without the joke. Then I was ready to move on to the next proposal submission. But my husband just couldn’t let this little incident go. He had to make a whole learning experience out of it.  

“Why do you think you spent so much time writing and rewriting the proposal but you completely ignored the images?” he asked. (In my defense, I did not “completely ignore” the images. I simply completely forgot to include them with my application. Totally different. But anyway. It was obviously important to him that we dissect this.)

“Why do YOU think I (rolls eyes and makes huge, elaborate air quote gesture) “completely ignored” the images?” I asked.

(Husband stares at the side of my head, which I can see even though we are walking the dogs at the time and I am pretending to be totally focused on the road and only mildly interested in what he has to say when I already know that whatever it is, he’s right.) “I think it’s because your writing has always been more important to you than your art,” he said.  

My friends, that was his big reveal. I already knew this, of course. But because I suspected his message was larger than this most obvious of observations, I pressed for more.  

“And?” I said. (I might have waited three days to say “And?”). Was he saying I should therefore stop making art? (No, he wasn’t.) That I was somehow cheating on my writing with art? (No.) He was just making the observation that I’ve always been a writer first and an artist second, “…in case I wanted to mine it for more.”

Which I did not. Nevertheless, another several days later, a tiny light clicked on in my brain. Since last spring, when I started this house building venture, I haven’t been working on the book of essays I started writing years ago. While I’ve missed it, I’ve been telling myself I only have so much space in my life for creativity. Now, thanks to my husband (who was, mind you, just shooting in the dark), I’m beginning to think I was wrong, that there’s always room for more. I just need to dream a little in order to discover it.