Model House, 1994, fifth grade
10 x 14.25 x 7.25 inches
I spent the whole third grade school year working on making model trains. By summer break I felt discouraged because my trains were not working out as I had intended. After building eight trains that year I felt like I could make no more progress and yet the trains left much to be desired. At the beginning of summer I shifted my attention away from the trains themselves and began working on a model town along the tracks for the trains. I soon became so involved in planning the town that I lost interest in model trains, and I spent the next three years making model buildings and other miniatures for a town. The house pictured above, photographed February 6 1994, is unfortunately the only building from my town that still exists.
This photo shows the train station and two smaller buildings along the railroad track in my model town in November 1993. Notice how the train station resembles the courthouse in Prineville and that it also looks a bit like one of my ghost town photographs. My intention in the beginning was to combine elements of Prineville's railroad history with the gold mining history of Baker City and the Eastern Oregon ghost towns to create a corresponding imaginary narrative for the buildings in my town.
