There are times – a lot of them – when I just don’t know how I’m going to go on. Things feel daunting. What I need to do to try to survive in New Denver and my new reality – adjuncting, juggling multiple jobs, scrambling with the ordinary day-to-day –…

There have been several setbacks since the beginning of this project, but none greater than losing my Ford F250, Bertha. Leaking oil out her tailpipe, she came to her final resting place at the inconvenient and terrifying juncture of I-225 and I-70, right at the bend in the road. Waiting…

Plans? We don’t need no stinking plans. From the beginning, the plan for the tiny house has always been in flux. A lot of my initial ideas have been scrapped for lack of practicality – for example, a back door/escape hatch and the idea of having a washer and dryer,…

As an artist, when you go into the studio and begin something, you always know there is the possibility of change. You respond to the materials, the light, the whims and discords, and eventually something emerges. You may enter with a “plan,” but intuition and the muse will have their…

From the beginning, the idea behind the Mayday Experiment was to try to change the conversation from being about “whether or not climate change exists” to “how can we be more sustainable regardless”? Because whether you believe in climate change or are among the very few who still deny its…

At least once a week, someone squeals to me that they love tiny homes. There are a lot of tiny home fans out there, along with tiny house television shows (none of which I’ve watched), movies and blogs. The zeitgeist is here. Which is why over 10,000 people registered for…

I decided to take a break from dealing with the tiny house last week and focus on more important issues…like PIE. I take cooking pretty seriously. And I don’t consider “making a sandwich” cooking – even though a sandwich is the most popular meal in America, as Michael Pollan pointed out…

Like many artists, I’m a bit of a loner. I like being alone in my studio, working — and with the time challenges of this project, I’ve turned into a near-hermit. This condition, of course, will be directly challenged by the Mayday Experiment, since touring with the tiny house will…

In high school, I was voted most likely to become a bag lady. I’m sure that given my thrift-store punk-rock ways, this was more a statement on my fashion sense than my future earning potential, but in my mind it also speaks to my lack of interest in earning money.…I am…

I believe it’s an artist’s job not to provide answers, but to ask questions. Artists are the canaries in the coal mine for problems we face as a society. We are the first to speak up, often under threat of punishment — or even death, in some regimes and times…

Ding-dong, the witch is dead. And by witch, I mean Bertha: my cranky, undependable but still beloved 1992 Ford F250 diesel truck. I bought Bertha when I decided to go forward with this project, simply so that I could buy supplies and transport the tiny house — but just driving around…

It’s hard to sustain passion over a long-term project. Setbacks – like the broken windows – feel monumental. Timelines and schedules are thrown out those broken windows as lack of experience and weather affect intentions and plans. Even the commitment of writing this blog each week gets tangled in my…

Recently I stumbled across a document on my computer while I was looking for something else. It outlined the initial plans for the tiny house, and brainstormed ideas. Many of them were crazy – folding walls and tables on the outside to delineate outside workspace for a studio, for example…

I remember struggling in second grade to pull myself up on spindly, useless arms and do a chin-up, face reddening from both exertion and embarrassment as I listened to the other kids laugh at my feeble efforts. Not coming from an athletic family, I hadn’t realized that upper-body strength was…

Artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy started writing about The Mayday Experiment, her project that calls for building a tiny house in which she will tour the country, talking about the dangers of climate change, recently sat down in the midst of another spring rainstorm to think about the seventeen things she…

Ahhhhh, this rain. Ordinarily, I would never complain about the rain. I love the staccato on the roof, the velvety moisture in Colorado’s dry air, the rolling complaint of the heavy sky. Even when I was in Ohio, so similar to Colorado this month in spring temperament, I embraced the mud…

It was a tough week with the tiny house. With a looming deadline to take it to ArtStir this weekend, we had set up work days a month ago to put on the roof, but weekend after weekend, rain had thwarted us. This past weekend, once penciled into the calendar…

I have a thing about waste. I don’t like it. As a result, it’s hard for me to throw things away. Frankly, I think it’s probably genetic. My mother doesn’t like waste either, raised by my Depression-era grandmother who was the queen enemy of waste. My mom only lasted a…

I have to confess: I’ve not yet been on the roof of my own tiny house. It feels like a travesty. An even bigger confession: I’m a little terrified of heights. I’ve gotten over this fear to some degree over the years – anyone who hangs work in a gallery will…

When Philip Spangler and I first started making plans for the tiny house, we searched everywhere to find examples of an on-board rainwater plumbing system. Many viral tiny-house builders are selling plans, often made in Sketch-Up. But even though we looked at all of them, we found very few details…

Water always finds a way. In planning the tiny house, there have been so many conversations about water. Not only rainwater as a force of good – providing showers and drinking water – but rainwater as a destructive force, winnowing through every narrow channel and path. This is why there…