I can't remember the first collection I had, because I've loved collecting since before I can remember. Sometimes I love items because they have a story (like my vintage blue enamel French street signs), sometimes because each item is beautiful (sea urchins), sometimes it's just to have a lot of things of a particular color (mercury glass candlesticks, eggs). I like to have multiples of anything I really like--maybe I'm just a hoarder, maybe I'm greedy! But I do love how everyday items can become elevated to the status of artwork when massed in a group (stacked beach rocks, light bulbs in a bell jar, cookbooks arranged by color on a kitchen shelf). And I love a group of true artwork, though it doesn't have to be fancy (my favorite paintings are four watercolors I bought from a tiny old lady on a bridge over-looking Notre Dame in Paris).
But artist Lisa Congdon...she's done me one better. She is spending the year collecting collections! Every day she is documenting a collection on her blog A Collection a Day, 2010. It's lovely. It's full of the everyday-objects type of collections, and may make you think about some of your own things a little differently. She occasionally sketches or paints a collection, and her artwork is simply fantastic. I'm adding it to the collection of blogs in my reader.
All images by Lisa Congdon, from A Collection a Day, 2010.
