The Dreamtiger Artist Residency

The Dutch House Group founder, Angela Pelster-Wiebe, has some pretty intense feelings around the idea of home. 

When Angela's kid was three, their house burned down one night while the two of them watched it from the street. Unable to afford another home in a very expensive city, they spent the next year bumping around from family to family while Angela tried to figure out what to do next with little money and an uncertain job as a substitute teacher. Angela and her kid eventually moved into her mom's basement. 

Later, when she graduated from the University of Iowa, Angela, who is a Canadian, had 60 days to find employment that could be considered an apprenticeship of her degree (an MFA), or she (and her child) would be kicked out of the country. This meant that Angela needed a writing or publishing related job.

After begging and pleading with everyone she knew, she found an adjunct gig at a small college through her neighbor that paid $2000 for the semester. It was nowhere close to paying her bills, but it meant her visa would be renewed and she and her kid could stay in the country, her kid could stay in their school, and they could stay in the house they’d made their home for one more year. But without any way to pay for the rest of their lives, it wouldn’t matter--and Angela couldn’t work outside her field because of her visa.

Angela had been dating Richard Wiebe (TDHG's Film advisor) and his cats for less than a year at that point. One afternoon, he told Angela that she had just won the Dreamtiger Award (Dreamtiger being one of the cats), and that all Angela's problems were solved; she just needed to accept it. The Dreamtiger Award was the biggest student loan that Richard could get so that Angela could use it to pay her bills and stay in the country. It felt simultaneously shameful and magical for Angela to accept help like that, but she eventually did. Angela and her kid stayed,  Angela and Richard got engaged, Angela landed a real job, she married Richard.

When Angela and Richard bought their first home in St Paul, Minnesota, it was a source of deep joy for all of them to finally feel grounded in house and home. None of it would have ever happened had other people not helped Angela out with housing--temporary and permanent--when she so desperately needed it.