DOMINIQUE MOODY HAS BEEN AN ASSEMBLAGE ARTIST FOR MANY YEARS, making art with found materials. The Nomad is both her home and latest masterpiece. Since the eighties, she had been planning to build a house truck. However, in 2002, she discovered an article about Jay Shafer and his tiny house. After contacting him and learning more, Dominique knew that a tiny house was the perfect medium through which to tell her story.

She is no stranger to the nomadic lifestyle. Her father was in the military, and Dominique was born in Germany. Her family moved around constantly during her childhood, living in a forty-foot New Moon trailer when they returned to the United States. Her current location in Los Angeles is one of forty-five different addresses she’s had throughout her life. It turns out she has wanderlust in her blood—her family line can be traced back to an ancient African nomadic tribe, the largest on the planet.

Dominique’s tiny house is truly a labor of love. The house took four years to design, and an additional three years to construct. She is legally blind, and built the house with the help of friends, family, volunteers, and hired professionals.

Photograph by Khari Scott and Dominique Moody

Because she is partially sighted, she focused on filling the house with round, organic shapes and the textures of wood and metal. The corrugated steel siding of her house isn’t reclaimed, but it’s striking. Dominique rusted the metal with a mixture of water, vinegar, and salt, and then colored the steel with metal stain.

Dominique knew she wanted round windows in her tiny house, but specialty windows are expensive. One day at the laundromat, she realized the round door on the washing machine looked just like the kind of window she wanted! She found a company that refurbishes old commercial laundry machines, and she was able to get six windows for the price of one round window bought new.

Reclaimed wood adds a variety of stories to the tiny house. Clear heart redwood from 1,500-year-old trees came from a demolished bridge in Bakersfield, CA, and Dominique had used it for an art installation she made for a hospital. She used the leftover redwood as the baseboard, trim for her skylight, and shower surround. Found tree branches work beautifully as hand rails on the porch. The porch itself is clad with 100-year-old barn wood, and the wooden threshold of an old stable, worn down in the center by horse hooves, serves as the lintel above the door. One woman even gifted Dominique ten boxes of cedar paneling, which she used as lining for her kitchen drawers and as the flooring in her storage loft.

Photographs by Khari Scott and Dominique Moody

Since the house is an art piece reflecting her family history, Dominique made sure that family items were given a place of honor. Her father carried a globe with him wherever he traveled, and it now hangs above the entry in a half-spherical window. His apple crates that once held books became the drawers for her kitchen cabinets. A simple galvanized tub of his is now her bathroom sink, and it is the first thing you see when you walk in the door.

Dominique Moody’s tiny house is a living, breathing work of art many years in the making. Not only does it represent the past and present of her story, but it also helps strike up conversations about what it means to create a meaningful home in this day and age. “A place is one thing—a home is a complete other kind of environment,” Dominique says. “It’s an art form to create our shelter in reflection of who we are.”

Photograph by Khari Scott and Dominique Moody