There’s always a story behind how startup artist-collective galleries devoted to young, emerging contemporary artists get by financially, but few of them involve home-improvement reality television and a man named Roger Hazard.

Crawl Space Gallery has cramped finances. It doesn’t sell much art, or even show much art destined to be widely saleable, and the gallery has never received a grant to pay for exhibitions of young contemporary artists such as Todd Simeone, Anne Mathern, Brad Biancardi, Jason Wood, Chad Wentzel, Tony Weathers, and Diana Falchuk—some of the most promising emerging artists in the city. Instead, seven member artists pay dues that go into operating the space, including covering the $750 monthly rent.

But Crawl Space has an unlikely angel: the A&E network.

Turns out that after several of the gallery’s founding members dropped out and left only Mathern and Megan Szczecko standing, Szczecko moved to New York and took a job working as an assistant designer on the A&E show Move This House, which joins such other A&E fare as Sell This House! (the only one with an exclamation point), Flip This House, Ask This Old House, and Inside This Old House.

The show is shot in Seattle, so when Szczecko comes back here, she stays with Mathern, and A&E covers half Mathern’s home rent. That frees up Mathern, a freelance photographer and nanny in addition to her studio work, to cover $250 in gallery rent every month. Because Szczecko makes good money at A&E, she throws in as much as Mathern to keep Crawl Space going, even though, from New York, she’s more like a silent partner. A&E is subsidizing Seattle art! Some of the Crawl Space artists even appear on the show.

Crawl Space is good. Supporting it is good. Now everybody, go watch Move This House and buy whatever its advertisers tell you to.

Thanks, Tanya and Roger, you crazy pair!