This Week from Lisa Congdon: Getting Motivated for Creativity in 2010

I am one of those people who always has to have some sort of creative project. For the most part, my creative projects are built into the way I make my living: preparing for art shows, collaborating with other artists, working on illustration projects for clients. This year, I decided to motivate myself even further to be creative every day by inventing for myself a daily project for 2010. On January 1, I launched A Collection a Day, 2010 .



A Collection a Day, 2010 is a project that will span exactly one year, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. On each of those 365 days, I will photograph or draw (and occasionally paint) one collection. Most of the collections are real and exist in my home or studio; those I will photograph. Some are imagined; those I will draw or (occasionally) paint.




Since I was a young girl, I have been obsessed both with collecting and with arranging, organizing and displaying my collections. (You can see a profile here on Poppytalk about my just a few of my collections from 2008). This project is my attempt to document my collections, both the real and the imagined. Some of my collections are so large that I will need to photograph them separately over several days. I will likely not attempt to photograph collections in which the individual pieces are large in size or awkward in shape (i.e. my art collection or vintage enamel dishware collection). The only rule is that I must photograph or draw a whole or part of a collection each day for 365 days and post the result here on this blog.


The practice of collecting and documenting collections is as old as the hills. I want onlookers to know that I do not profess to be doing anything new or unique or ingenious. I am embarking on this project because I love my collections, and I want to document them in a way that makes sense to me, and share them with whoever might be interested in looking at them.


Yearly projects that folks share via the internet are also not a new concept. Countless creative people have been individually and collaboratively launching year-long, 365 day, or 52 week projects and sharing them through Flickr and through blogs over the past several years. Yearly projects help us to stay focused, tell our story in a structured way, and keep us motivated to live a creative life.
Will I run out of stuff to photograph or draw over time? Will it remain inspiring and enjoyable? Only time will tell. I hope if you are interested you will come along with me on A Collection a Day, 2010 . What project(s) have you started this year?

Collecting

I'm collecting pictures of people's collections and have started a collecting group on flickr recently called, Poppytalk Collectors. This sweet picture above is from artist, Sarah Ahearn who also happens to make beautiful collages. If you wish to see more of her work, click here.

Oh, and please feel welcome to upload your collections to our flickr collecting group. The link is here.

lauren nassef - collecting series

i've been really inspired by the people participating in the collecting series here and as well as the readers response. recently, julia rothman wrote to tell me about the work of lauren nassef who has a series of drawing she did about collectors. she researched interesting collectors and drew their portraits with their collections growing out of their heads. they go so well with the them of collecting and thank you julia for bringing them to my attention. i'll be back next week with more in the collecting series and can hardly wait to share them!

collecting

i'm really loving the idea of collecting lately, and everytime we're out and about, my eyes are open to picking up beautiful gifts from nature off the ground. usually it's acorns, pinecones and leaves. with that on my mind, i happened to just search on etsy using the keyword "collections" and came up with an amazing amount of pieces that i wouldn't mind collecting. i love the idea of having drawers and drawers of different collections i could pull out from time to time and go through or in some cases have displayed about on our walls. above three:

swedish matchboxes from abigail vintage
25 vintage game playing cards from itsybitsandpieces
vintage football matchboxes from abigail vintage







(above five):

vintage badges from retroplanet
florida gatropod/conch/auger shell collection from seaofshells
old glass bottles from the laughing parrot
vintage graphic designed matchboxes from abigail vintage
lisette from alpenhimmel

collecting: quill embroidery baskets

i've seen these quillworked baskets throughout the years growing up here in canada, and recently had read an article on canadian house and home about collecting them.

quillwork (porcupine and bird) is generally identified with the mi'kmaq and ojibway of eastern canada. glass beads soon replaced the harder to use quills as a means of decoration when they were introduced into north america by the europeans as a trading item resulting in the craft of quilling becoming almost totally lost.

apparantly only a handful of canadian native women keep this unique craft alive which requires many hours to create. just the sweetgrass alone which is used for the rim is collected from late june to mid august and is then prepared for by blanching and drying. the birch bark collected in early spring requires precision and skill to strip the fresh bark and leaving the tree intact.

the baskets still being crafted today start as small as a 3 inch diameter box. older and antique boxes can be found at auctions and antique shops across the country. online link and resource: snowgoose.on.ca.

happy canada day!

and i'm posting this sweet little princess vintage stamp that fellow canadian, fiona from cartolina cards and dominion post and salvage emailed me this past week as a little "happy canada day" cheer from her collection. if you love vintage stamps, you'll love her cards.