Collecting like a child

What rocks, shells, and sea glass teach us about art

I spent the last few weeks on Martha’s Vineyard decidingly not thinking about art. Instead, I walked daily on the beach looking for shells and sea glass. I became a genuine collector: scanning the beach from afar, and then bending down to get a closer look at what the terrain had to offer. After gathering rocks, shells, and glass that caught my eye, I went home and researched them.

I learned about tektites and the various crabs that occupy which shells. I looked at a chart that tracked “rare” colours of sea glass and made notes. I cleaned off my finds and organized them by colour and type. If this sounds very childish, it’s because it was.

As a child, I collected rocks and then Barbies. Sophie Haigney wrote about this phenomenon a few years ago in an essay titled “Accumulation and Appreciation” for affidavit. It’s hard to choose a quote to share since the whole article is so pertinent to my own experience as a collector—the universal desire to accumulate and project value. “We start collecting with rocks,” writes Haigney. “Rocks are easy targets for young collectors, in part because there is an abundance of rocks almost everywhere on earth. But the point is that there are certain rocks that we choose, taking them into our hands and pockets and jars; rocks that become our rocks,” she continues.

I felt closer to collecting than I have in a while, down on that beach.

There are a lot of similarities between art collecting and rock collecting, minus the accessibility of one and the price of the other. “Some pattern is composed by the child on the beach, in her rock collection, even if it’s hard to discern. Part of what changes over time, if that child moves on from rocks to snow globes to fine art, is, of course, money. Or, maybe appreciation,” writes Haigney.

When I’m considering art, I go through the same motions I did on the beach: an aerial sweep with my eyes, curious and open-minded, and then honing in on an artwork that catches my attention, followed by research to learn more. It’s nice to be reminded of the process, of the excitement of discovering and learning, to bring me back to art.

Felix Edouard Vallotton, La Grève blanche, Vasouy, 1913

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In case you missed it:

I visited Margaux Williamson’s exhibition at MOCA a couple of weeks ago and wrote a short review of it for Toronto Today, which you can read here.