SEATTLE

SITTING on the couch in her 250-square-foot house — a garage she has transformed into her version of a dream home — Michelle de la Vega, a visual and performance artist, held a pillow in her arms. Three more pillows hung in shadowboxes on the wall above her, and a few hundred more, she said, were in an art studio nearby, part of an installation called “Dream House,” a tribute to her father.

Made of paper, the pillows are decorated with the elaborate architectural drawings her father made during her childhood in Santa Barbara, Calif. “He always had a hideaway in our tiny garage where he recorded his dream houses,” she said. Her father, however, was not an architect but a former combat Marine suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, who coped by losing himself in an imaginary world of suburban splendor.

When Ms. de la Vega was in high school, the financial stress resulting from her father’s condition caused her family to lose their small house, she said, so “the meaning of having a house — or not having one — is significant in my family.”

Ms. de la Vega, 40, bought the garage and the house in front of it several years ago, for $208,000, with money from a divorce settlement.