Dad Was an Artist: A Survivor's Story

Growing up in rural southern Idaho, Jason Horejs didn’t realize how unusual his family was. His father had chosen to pursue an unlikely career as a fine artist, and, in 1978, had moved the family into a single-wide trailer while setting out to build a large, geodesic dome home in the countryside. The building project was supposed to take nine months, but soon the months turned into years, and as the spaceship-like dome rose among the potato fields, the family grew.Neighboring farmers were confounded by the dome, and the other oddities of the family. Jason’s parents took their children out of the public school system to be homeschooled, avoided modern healthcare, vaccines and hospital baby deliveries. Only as adults would Jason and his siblings come to realize how extraordinary their upbringing had been and appreciate the opportunities they had thanks to their parents’ unusual approach to life. They saw first-hand, and were a part of, their dad’s transformation from obscure painter to internationally renowned artist, and would realize that a family can do things differently, overcome anything, and be stronger for it.Dad Was An Artist is a humorous and warm account of a family that went off the edge, and eventually found their way back. It’s a story of struggle and persistence and how a child can find a path to stability in turbulent and mystifying circumstances.