This dreamer has a totally crazy, possibly genius idea

He once wanted to turn the moon purple. Yes, purple. Just aim lasers at it for a whole night and day, long enough for everyone in the world to get a glimpse.

Doug Arnholter's got a lot of ideas. He has one right now, and he's serious. It's also kind of awesome and crazy — maybe just crazy enough to work.

Six years in, it's almost in launch mode now, though he spends a lot of time inside a barely heated garage on the Northwestside wondering if it will actually take off.

Yes, there are doubts. With the way things have been going — no RV, no big sponsors, a fraction of the money coming in — there's a good chance it won't even happen, at least not according to plan.

But tell this 56-year-old his head's in the clouds, and he'll tell you that's not nearly high enough. Some people's dreams stop at their doorstep. His stretch all the way into the cosmos.

What's Arnholter's big idea? It's simple. Ambitiously simple. Create a mural made by thousands of people in every state in the country, plus Washington, D.C. Call it the "Mural of America," make it about reminding people that humanity is a shared experience and allot 15 months, 16,000 miles and $175,000 to do it.

"It's important for this country," Arnholter says. "We're always bickering, so we miss the big picture. A woman once told me this project is about 'the cohesion of diversity.' That's the best way I've heard anyone describe it."

Traveling to a new state every weekend, with a break in the winter, Arnholter wants to stop by the Boston Marathon, the Las Vegas Art Festival, the Treme Gumbo Creole Festival in New Orleans and the Broad Ripple Art Fair. He'll use a similar route taken by the Ringling Brothers Circus in the 1900s. He'll live in an RV.

First stop: Pendleton, S.C.

"I won't have a salary, but I get to live," he says.

He'll set up shop at art and state fairs and invite passers-by to pick up a brush and make their mark on two identical paint-by-numbers canvasses. One mural will go to the state, and the other he'll take with him to present at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Fourth of July weekend in 2016.

That's when he'll combine all 51 murals into an 8-foot-tall, 200-foot-long "Mural of America." The project's supposed to remind us that, even in our increasingly fractured society, there is such a thing as community. Everyone is a part of the "Mural of America."

If you want to really understand what he's trying to do, though, you have to enter his world. As Arnholter opens up the door to the small garage, smoke and the sounds of jazz piano escape into the air.

It's a chaotic scene inside. There are brushes and paint cans and Solo cups and random boxes everywhere. There's a lawnmower. Arnholter's workspace? Basically a wooden armchair next to a makeshift table covered in dust, ash and paint and under which a small electric heater quietly coos.

He crouches over an old laptop as he waits for online donations to roll in. They don't. Behind him are these 8-foot-tall painted canvases, which are signed by hundreds of people in the margins. A cat scampers in from the house. This is Arnholter's impossible little alcove of art and ambition, and it'll do.

He doesn't live here. He doesn't live anywhere. He's homeless and jobless. This is his niece and nephew's home, and he's scraping by with what little money he has from selling art. A long time ago, in the 1980s and 90s, he was wealthy, he says.

He helped sell home furnishings in South Carolina and later worked as an executive in Dallas, where he helped a pest-control company absorb local landscaping businesses. When he realized there was no joy in what he did, and that he had a 3-year-old daughter he barely knew, he quit his job to raise her on an organic farm outside Bloomington.

It was the start of a new life. Working and living off the land, with plenty of time left over to think up new ideas. They moved to a farm bustling with swans and peacocks. After that, one called "On Top of the World."

He eventually found his way to Indianapolis, he says, when he began working as a studio and commercial artist in the early 2000s. He says it was a total accident. Then, in 2009, he decided he could no longer ignore that thing that had been rattling in his brain for years.

Time is running out. He's supposed to leave by April, but the way the money's been trickling in, that probably won't happen. His fundraising page is indiegogo.com/projects/mural-of-america-world-the-big-picture. It's been causing him a lot of stress lately.

It would be wrong to call Arnholter out of touch. He knows the task ahead of him. He knows how easily it is to throw up his hands and say, "Oh, it was all just a stupid dream."

"I know this thing won't really matter in the end. All I'll ever do will really just be this tiny, tiny drop," he says.

But, in the face of all of this, Arnholter does the only thing he can do. It's the only option, really, for anyone who dares to dream big.

"I'm trying," he says.

That's how Doug Arnholter thinks. His ideas seem far-fetched at first, but then you realize all he wants is to do something worth remembering. Pointing lasers at the moon to make it appear purple is actually possible, says former NASA roboticist Randall Monroe, if you give every living human being a copy of the spotlight on the roof of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.

The ideas are about making a difference, maybe even making history.

"Doug energizes me," says Mary Lett, a close friend.

"He's this really charismatic, eccentric, lovable, thoughtful guy," says his daughter, Molly Arnholter, now a 24-year-old child care provider living in California.

He's a bit off-kilter, sure, but wasn't also John Lennon, Joan Baez, Salvadore Dalí and perhaps every other artist who did anything worth remembering? No one changes the world by conforming to it.

Arnholter's big idea? It just might be genius.

Wei-Huan Chen can be reached at wei-huan.chen@indystar.com or on Twitter at @weihuanchen.