The Childhood Homes 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 our childhood homes.

Since 2013, I have interviewed over 330 people about the house they lived in when they were 10 years old. I had each person draw their childhood home from memory alone without looking at any photos or contacting family for information.  If they could not remember a detail of the house, say, where the windows were or the type of roof the house had, it was left out of the drawing. The focus is on the visual memory of these houses as opposed to an accurate representation of the houses.  

I then recorded each person telling a story about their house.

I redraw the drawings so that they have a consistent look.  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 and put one in the installation and make the other one available to the person who drew the house.

There is a QR code on the back of each house that links to audio of the person who drew their home tell a story about it.