Little children are born collectors. Maybe this inbred tendency can be explained by the human capacity for wonder or traced to our hunter-gatherer past. Rocks fill pockets; leaves are stashed in hands; flowers adorn hair. Little ones express surprise, happiness, awe. I am still that child. In One Thousand Treasures du Jour, I celebrate the miracle of life.

 

One Thousand Treasures du Jour is an installation of one thousand tiny things, mostly from Nature, that bless our days, from seed to pebble to feather, all fitting 2” x 1.5” in grey cardboard receptacles.

 

Nature is my ultimate collaborator, but for this work, at the beginning, I entered into a special collaboration with my partner Dick Miller, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is often deeply depressed. Inquiring if he found his ‘treasure du jour’ was a lighthearted way of communicating and an invitation for him to emerge out of his somber mood.

 

I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation that seems to have no solution whatsoever.

— Susan Griffin