Artist: David Fowler

Project: “Dollar House”

Description: An hour south of Dallas, I found a four-room house rotting on skids in a field. I bought it for a dollar and paid the owner, a house mover, $2,499 to move it to a wind-blown prairie hill. I figured this speck on the horizon would be a place to write and ponder, but instead found myself down a rabbit hole, in a world where cantaloupes conjoin and cafes sit next to funeral homes. If you caught a fish in a farm pond, you could take it to the grocery store and they’d weigh it at the checkout counter. You could spend an afternoon examining the contents of a button jar dumped on the porch of an abandoned farmhouse. You were encouraged to smoke in the barber chair. At night, you could ride shotgun with the elderly patrolman, literally, after being instructed that you were in charge of the twelve-gauge in the backseat. The house became an ark in a sea of grass and small-town wonders. For a dollar, I took the ride.