COLLECTING THE EARTH @ the Altered Page

Collectors Edition: Chapter 6

 (JUST CLICK ABOVE on chapter 6 THIS FOR SETH'S SITE)

Seth Apter's ALTERED PAGE  has been featuring artists' collections the last few weeks...THIS WEEK, some clay pieces that i've acquired over the years are featured there with others' obsessions as well. 

take a peak. 

the above are works by martha rosenfeld, maria scott, elena justice, brian hurt, james watkins ..

my statement is below in white.

I collect the Earth, clay/pots and rocks. The pictured clay works are all LARGE, very large, some vessels/others sculptural......and small pieces everywhere. And rocks!! Many many rocks and stones in and out of our house. And years ago i began wrapping rocks...my RAPT rocks, enRAPTured===carried away with great emotion.

EVERYBODY NEEDS A ROCK

(TOP collage: me and my first rock, 1971, (which is right in front of me now after moving back and forth across our country with me a few times)..illustrates why the 10 rules are important: it's ="a special rock that you find yourself and keep as long as you can---maybe forever"...
and the second photo is Peter Parnall's illustration for Rule Number 9)

after the responses from robyn's post "tied up with string" on her blog ArtPropelled, i realized more than ever that Byrd Baylor had it right in 1974 when she wrote the book "EVERYBODY NEEDS A ROCK"...not just me, and not just children.
this book was part of an annual ritual in my classroom, with beach rocks piled in the center of our circle, i'd read this book to seven year olds (before we'd head out to find rocks, tell stories of rocks, draw rocks), and it began:

'everybody needs a rock.
i'm sorry for kids who don't have a rock for a friend.
i'm sorry for kids who only have tricycles, bicycles, horses, elephants, goldfish,3-room playhouses, fire engines, wind-up dragons,and things like that--
if they don't have a rock for a friend.
that's why i'm giving then my own TEN RULES for finding a rock...
not just any rock.
i mean a special rock that you find yourself and keep as long as you can--
maybe forever.'~~~~
and some of the ten rules follow:

RULE NUMBER 3
'bend over.
more.
even more.
you may have to sit on the ground with your head
almost touching the earth.
You have to look a rock right in the eye.
Otherwise, don't blame me if you can't find a good one.'and

RULE NUMBER 9
'always
sniff
a rock.
Rocks have smells.
some kids can tell by sniffing whether a rock came from
the middle of the earth or from an ocean or from a mountain
where wind and sun touched it
every day for a million years.

you'll find out that grown-ups can't tell these things.
too bad for them.
they just can't smell as well as kids can.'