The Bones, The Dream & The Invite

It just got real around here.

May 25, 2025

It’s a fantasy…one that I think I can turn into reality. It’s a selfish dream. Every action we make is inherently self-serving. This is no different. Turn a run-of-the-mill downtown American Home setting into a thriving million dollar art gallery and studio, in and around our little garage. The idea is evolve the dream into action, 50% writing project, 75% art project, 40% part placemaking project and 33.3% capital adventure; and make it a real experience…one in which the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. I read that 89.65% of all statistics are made up in the moment, but I am not certain of the truth of that statement. If Christ was fully man and fully God, there is no reason why, if I pursue this end with his name upon my lips, that Million Dollar Garage can become more valuable that I could dream. I want to create value for you to participate and I suspect that you are the percentage that I cannot account for.

Let me show you what we’re working with. These photographs are from this morning…Sami is none too keen me sharing them with you. We have to start somewhere, (we’ve already covered the philosophy in previous posts).

Here is the current state of affairs:

The Million Dollar Garage stands at the ready...a pile of purged trash ready to be removed...a semi studio set up outside ready to be used until the rebuild begins...the garden ready to be planted...and the patio ready to be used in the way patios are used during the Michgan summer

I know, I have not been fulfilling my role as a dutiful husband…but I’m in the middle of dreaming and planning, it doesn’t concern me that it takes on an awkward teenager appearance for a bit. There’s always an ugly pause before our pretty plans take off. Spring cleaning…waiting to be frost free…big plans must take precedence over tidy appearances.

You’ve been here before…RFD…Mayberry…we live on a dead end street named after our first president…in a town of dead president streets…and all the landmark descriptor streets: Main…Water…Riverside drive…Bridge…Hill. There are subdivisions with streets named with Upper Peninsula Towns, Native Trees and Foliage, and neighborhoods that use all the family first names of the developer who bought the land. You know this town…unless you’re a city slicker…and even if you are…you’ve seen Hallmark movies.

Our home is comprised of Me, Sami, Noah, Phinney, Fred and Li’lBit (aka lilshit).

a 51 year old artist and writer
a wonderful wife and caring medical professional who puts everyone else first
a 9-year-old Old English Sheepdog-Noah-dog Sheep-bear, aka Bubs
a 19-year-old pain in the ass screaming dairy cow-looking cat
a 3-year-old $5,000 Blatter-surgery, rescued-from-the-parking-lot at Costco, cat
an 8-month, wild-assed, forced-upon-me-against-my-will-and-I-am-still-mad, cat

Let me tell you how I see it…

There is a story in here somewhere…there’s some mutual benefit to be had. Let’s see if we can find it. There is a quilt to be sewn…a community…an ecosystem…an archive to be built.

A Million Dollar Garage plus the Alpha and Omega…

We’re the Delta. You and I…

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

I’m going to close my eyes and give you the the baseline story…just the way it comes out…the story I think that I am building…but surely, not what it will become:

I have had this little fantasy for years. Can you make boring and rote things into something magnificent? Why couldn’t a little garage in the little town be a million dollar garage? Like, no-cap, literally, for-real…six zeroes. There are a thousand reasons why the idea is preposterous, but…to my way of fantasizing, it is absolutely possible.

The only way to make a million bucks in a little garage, with no great financial market to support it, is to aspire to build something that cannot be measured. A destination that is powered by a different calculus. How can you make people feel like a million bucks? How can you make people feel better for simply participating in the project? You show up in one mood and leave happier. Can it be measured by a million gratitudes? Like Vin Scully said: “29,000 people and a million butterflies!” Gestalt! Synergy. Disney? Oz.

I see myself as another man..maybe my future self…maybe the man I am inside…my untried intentions…a man who saw past the limitations of what is accepted…a man who made a million smiles and hopes…a man who turned Mayberry into a Midwestern Paris, if only in the fleeting imaginary glimpses of ‘could’ and ‘wish’. A happy frumpy wizard…in cut-off grey sweatpants and hoodie. Not THE wizard…a wizard…not being discovered as a man perpetuating a fraud…but found for the purpose of showing Dorothy that she could make her own magical world too. She could make art too, or build skyscrapers in Kansas. I know what Dorothy is capable of…because I made these artworks below…and I had no inclination to make them until ten years ago. (shameless plug.). If I can become an artist out of nowhere, just dreams and sweat, then there is nothing The Scarecrow can’t do.

I see the garage in a dream like I am hovering as an unnoticed drone buzzing about the grounds. There are neighbors and art collectors milling about with beverages. It’s a regular Thursday in July. Somebody made burgers…simple burger pucks that are easy to manage but good…overrun with molten Muenster…runny with juice, yet no one’s hands get greasy while eating. They are mingling to the music coming from the garage…my work music…some Ry Cooder…Beethoven’s 9th…Muddy Waters…Second-line band marches…every song hits the mood…everyone loves every song…they are sitting on the porch near the tikis laughing dancing in their seats like they all know how to play saxophone…or in the garage by my still wet paintings from the day’s work talking about how we could make MDG even cooler…the outdoor tele has the Tigers versus the Royals…and the tigers are winning in the bottom of the 7th…close game…we love close games…blowouts give closure too early. The paintings are so close to being finished that they just sit and await judgement.

Outside the garage in the fake grass-ed driveway are two pristine white festival tents…one 10x10 covering my saws and woodworking area for making frames…one 10x20 housing my full art festival set up with finished paintings waiting to be adopted into good homes…there are dinner-plate sunflowers shielding the view from one side of the house….blocking the view of the paintings on sawhorses…its going to rain tonight and I want to see what happens if you let them get soaked…make the dried acrylic curl and warp to add texture for the next step…some folks walk barefoot to keep the wet paint off their shoes…there are bees and bugs, but nobody gets bitten or stung…there is beer but nobody gets drunk…there are drunks that don’t get antsy for a drink. pax varhaus.

Build it and they will come. - The Voice

When I open my eyes I still see it, it is becoming real. Somehow, I see you there. Maybe on the phone…maybe in spirit…maybe playing an air drum trio on the couch-drums, guitar, sax…

or possibly you drove from Rosebud, Texas…to hang out with the wizard…to meet Ray Kinsella… “build it”…you’re crazy… “ease his pain”…like its Iowa.

Maybe you came from Dover, Ohio…Southampton, NY… or Portland, MI.

or you flew in from Williamsburg…Brooklyn or Virginia.

and maybe there is a line of cars stretching down the highway like the ending of Field of Dreams. Maybe James Earl Jones will be there…

The story ends in renewal and faith and a million smiles. Our maybe it dies in the delusions of a man hoping that dreaming is enough to actively participate in our world. I know this part of the story for certain: If I put in the energy, with a humble nod toward the Creator, it will not be wasted, and it will not turn out as I dream, but it will be better than I can imagine.

I ask you: come and see? You are the project. You are Million Dollar Garage. You are the wizard and Dorothy and the scarecrow and Vin Scully. No bullshit: I need you.

Now what?

I’ve shown you the beginning. I’ve shown you, rather eccentrically, the idea and the dream. Now, I would like, really like, your input.

Mad-libs for Substack: What Should I Do Next?

use the leave a comment button that follows to tell me what you want to see next.

Make some Art with the existing infrastructure?
Show how I got rid of the paintings that no longer seemed relevant?
Show you the battle plan for building out the studio from the fantasy?
You have a better idea to tell me…?
You have no opinion but want to tell me you’re here?

Varhaus

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