The 500 Houses We Lived In When We Were 10, Drawn From Memory Alone is an ongoing Lara’s Lab participatory documentary art installation about the visual and anecdotal memory of the houses we lived in when we were 10 years old.

Since 2013, I have interviewed over 350 people about the house they lived in when they were 10 years old. Each person drew their house from memory alone without looking at any photos or contacting anyone who knows details about the house.  If they could not exactly recall a detail of the house (like the type of roof the house had), it was left out of the drawing. The focus is on the visual memory of the house as opposed to an accurate representation of the house.  I then recorded each person telling a story about their house.

I redraw drawings so that the person’s memory becomes processed through me and so all of the drawings have a consistent style.  The drawings are printed on laminated transparency film and suspended by nails off of small 2" wood blocks.  The suspension away from the blocks allows shadows to be cast on the blocks, intimating that the drawing is just a memory of the house. I construct two copies of each mini-house: one for the installation and one for the person who lived in the house.

On the back of each house block is a QR code. When you pick up a house and scan the code…you will hear the story that the person told me about their house!

If you would like to add the memory of the house you lived in when you were 10, please visit my studio, Lara’s Lab.