Act I: What is a Collection?

My Jewelry Collection, 2021
James Albers
collection of jewlery, video. 9min 54 sec.

Jamie's Childhood Eraser Collection, 2021
Jamie Lewis
10 photographs of rubber eraser collection
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Words from the artist:
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As a volunteer examining the AMS Permanent Collection, I was reminded of my childhood eraser collection. Like the Permanent Collection, my erasers were currently in storage with a thin layer of dust. As a child, the acquisition phase was the most active and rewarding, I loved tracking how many erasers I had on a ledger on the front of the box. Looking through the collection, I feel zeitgeist for my childhood. The erasers are like ethnographic objects of the 1980’s; the representation of aliens was different then, the computers, calculators and cassette tape erasers are now old school and obsolete. But now what do I do with this box of objects, what purpose do they serve? Why is the AMS collection titled Permanent? Is my collection a permanent collection, semi-permanent, temporary?
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To Whom It May Concern (for Lionel Thomas), 2021
Sydney Dunn
collage, archival documents
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Words from the artist:
This collage functions first and foremost as opportunity for comparison between two documents from the archives. The first, featured on the left side, is the selection from an email between students referencing communication that needs to occur with an artist while the second is the resulting formal letter. For me, these were the documents that exemplified how the space of the AMS permanent collection and the Hatch serve as a training ground where students try to develop a professional identity. These documents are also a testament to the unknown legacy we leave behind through communication as I would suspect that had these students known their correspondence would be saved, the email would not include “grumpy old man ;)” as the subject line.
