"Love Shack." Molly Rideout, May 2014

Walls made from 900 romance novels and 3,000 nails with no other supports. Wooden roof tiled with romance novel covers. Premiered at Grin City Collective’s pop-up gallery show in Brooklyn, Iowa. The books were rescued from a nonprofit that accepts book donations for resale but which was going to throw these out.

In May 2015, love went up in flames during the ceremonial lighting by flaming arrow of The Love Shack. The house had been sitting mouldering in our sculpture barn for a year since its gallery debut and due to space constraints had to go. It was too solid to dismantle and too heavy to move anywhere except by forklift, so we gave it the best sending off we could and threw it a party and sent it up to that great plot in the sky. Everyone attending was there to celebrate the life of the sculpture. People put tokens of failed relationships inside before we lit it on fire as a symbolic letting go of lost loves. It was a wonderful final farewell to a labor of many loves. Pyrotechnics: Kenji Yoshino. Final event photo credits: Luke Saunders.