The Marginalian
The Marginalian

A Collection a Day: An Obsessive Homage to Order

Why we’re drawn to things organized neatly, or what sea urchins have to do with vintage erasers.

On January 1, 2010, artist and illustrator Lisa Congdon embarked on an unusual project — for 365 days, she was to photograph, draw, or, in the case of imaginary objects, paint one collection a day. She documented her process online and recently joined our own collection of blogs so great they became books.

A Collection a Day catalogs all 365 of Congdon’s quirky, obsessive, endlessly curious collections of tchotchkes — erasers, pencils, vintage stamps, mushrooms, receipts, medals, maps, sea urchins, and just about everything in between — in a beautiful volume that’s somehow calming and centering in its neatness, a rare oasis of order amidst the chaos of the everyday stuff that surrounds us.

Since I was a young girl, I have been obsessed both with collecting and with arranging, organizing and displaying my collections. This is my attempt to document my collections, both the real and the imagined.” ~ Lisa Congdon

For a peek inside Congdon’s creative process and what makes these collections so alluring with her wonderful recent talk from the San Francisco chapter of Creative Mornings — bonus points for the Ursus Wehrli, Andy Goldsworthy, and Edward Tufte references.

I think that ordinary objects become something different when they’re arranged with other like things… Seeing things with other like things helps us to see them in new ways.” ~ Lisa Congdon

Beautifully photographed and illustrated, A Collection a Day is a charming meditation on objects and stuff, part Obsessive Consumption, part Things, part its very own peculiar project with its own peculiar character.

Images courtesy of Lisa Congdon / UPPERCASE


Published October 20, 2011

https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/10/20/a-collection-a-day-lisa-congdon/

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