Rocks & Rituals
November 2nd 2022
As a child, I was always digging in the dirt, creating habitats for caterpillars of all kinds, and most importantly, collecting rocks. My brother and I would smash open stockpile rocks from Wedel’s just to find hidden treasures, which only ended up being small amounts of quartz. Around age five, my mom finally broke down and bought me a jar that I could use for collecting stones from different trips we took and crystals I bought at gift shops. She told me that I could only ever have as many rocks as what filled the jar, and no more. So, I filled it.
My rock collecting didn’t end during my childhood. On family vacations as a teenager, I polished hundreds of Petoskey stones with wet/dry sandpaper and walked the shoreline for hours in search of things to add to my collection. To be honest, I've had to buy a few more jars. This has always been somewhat ritualistic for me, in the sense that I find peace in collecting rocks and imagining the journey they’ve taken to arrive in the shape they are, with the fossils they’ve collected, and how they’ve landed on the beach in the same moment I've walked along to discover them.
More recently, I have become fascinated by the relationship that stones have with clay, and the process they pass through to be weathered away and pressurized and eventually dug up somewhere to be processed as usable clays. I envision a project; one where I create stoneware rocks of different shapes, sizes and with varying marks and blemishes. I roll them around together to add scratches and chips, creating a sense of authenticity. I sit in a garden, and watch from afar, while a young child, possibly my own self, fills a container with the rocks I created. Her toes wiggle periodically, and her small hands work tirelessly to fill the jar. It begins to rain, and what were believed to be solid rocks begin to weather away and pool at the base of the jar. She never rests or ceases to collect, because despite the clay running between her fingers, the stones are still there. They have simply taken on a new form.
It’s the epitome of my childhood, and it’s beautiful.
“The path leads to the end, as all paths do. I've had some rocky paths and dead ends, and decisions that led to disaster, and others that led to love and passion and poetry, to excitement and adventure. All I can do is embrace them all and move on.”
Marc Hamer in Seed to Dust
