After being confronted by my husband about the amount of spending on my personal obsessions I decided to share my own extravaganzas: scarves and crystals.
They are all over the house and I collect them incessantly… almost ritually and impulsively. They make me feel good, inspire me and are so irresistible to me! So I am showing just some of them from my collection here.
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While words such as “excessive” or “obsessive” might sometimes be used to describe persons with psychological or emotional issues, John Pomara, artist and assistant professor for Arts & Performance, thinks these qualities can be good – for artists.
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I was wondering if any of you have obsessions and would like to share them here on A & P. Would love to hear from your own eccentricities!?!
Incredibly beautiful crystals. I just want to pick each of them up & feel their individual vibration. I collect Zuni Fetishes, primarily wolves, coyotes & bears.
Angela,
I tend to obsess about whatever I am interested in. The last few years, I obsessed about cameras, professional Nikons, Canons. Then I learned about the new Leica DSL coming out this summer and I started thinking how I could possibly afford it.
Luckily, now that I am painting, I stopped obsessing about cameras. All I want now is time for myself. A friend once told me that one’s most precious possession is time. I now understand that.
Angela:
I’m obsessing over the crystals. I see a schorl, a sceptre or two, some colors of fluorite, a plate of amethyst crystals, likely from Brazil, rose quartz and a quartz crystal or two – likely polished, a calcite, maybe a plagioclase and a celestite. I’m sure about a few of them.
Maybe you L.A. people can help here, but there was an artist in the sixties or seventies – or possibly throughout those decades – who worked on one rather geometrical painting. She would build it up to a state of massiveness, only to tear it back down. The next version would be similar, and it too would be done away with. She finally did end up with a product – whether satisfactory to her eye or a matter of exhaustion – that now hangs in the L.A. area. Does this ring a bell?
Angela,
This is a great question! Like Birgit, I tend to get very deeply into one or a few things at a time, and these change over weeks or years. But I can’t think of any long-term proclivity that qualifies as obsession. As far as shopping, I may have a reverse obsession; I try to make do with simple and old stuff as long as possible. But I did buy a new hat to keep snow and sun off. Unfortunately, I found out it doesn’t work for both at the same time: the sun reflects from the snow and gives me a sunburn despite the hat.
Steve:
That’s odd, I recently bought a cowboy hat from a sales associate. whose obsession it was to sell it to me.
Angela,
I have an obsession with rocks, including crystals, but almost any rock can stop me in my tracks when I’m in the mood. Unfortunately, a streak of sheer common sense runs through the household, so I am limited to rocks that 1) I can carry and 2) won’t muck up my husband’s landscaping. So window sills in the studio and little piles in front of the studio on the cement footing and an occasional one snuck into the house are about all I collect.
One year, when I was walking in the early morning, I took to setting up little rock cairns (odd numbers — 3-5-7) at places I felt deserved or needed them. A deserted set of fence posts high on a cement-block bank go a number of them; they kept being knocked off, by the house tenants, human or feline, I never knew. Some got put next to tree roots that seemed a bit lonesome.
I made rules for myself — I had to find the proper rock)s) on that morning’s walk, they (obviously) had to be able to be carried, and I couldn’t go back to an appropriate spot to pick up or place them. Luckily the last rule could be easily gotten around because my walks were generally out and backs.
This was in the center of a residential city space, you understand, so picking up a rock was bound to be observed by a bicyclist, someone getting a morning paper, the curious window observer, a kid off to school. So I got curious looks, but no hassles. Maybe I should take it up again this summer. It was a fun way to pass the time. And I really did keep putting rocks back up on those rotting post tops — and something really did keep knocking them off.