This feature was conceived as a foray into the hearts/minds of Kenyon’s finest artists through the pages of their sketchbooks. Not all artists catalogue their inspiration in such a tightly bound style, however. Some, like art and English double major Ferrell Garramone ’13, “collect.” Read more about Garramone’s menagerie below the jump.

After corresponding with me via email (Garramone seems to use exclusively dashes in place of periods), we met one chilly evening on the third floor of Bexley Hall.  While Garramone took a break from her current painting project, we chatted and sorted through her various collected objects.

On the bottom right of the photo is Garramone’s ponytail from when she was 17. The sizable remaining  lock is the last of seven identical snippets, all of which she held on to after they were sheared from her head.

To the right of the ponytail are a few of Garramone’s paint brushes, plucked from a pouch containing many, many more. When I asked which of the brushes I should choose to photograph, she said, “The big ones are my favorite. I ruin them all.”

Garramone collected the row of five bird skeletons (visible on the bottom right corner of the photo) from the furnace in the Craft Center, where they often get caught. She keeps them in a lidless tin can, their fragile wings and hollow bones piled one on top of the other. Garramone is no stranger to decomposing objects: “I used to have a bug box full of bumblebees but when I graduated [high school] I gave them to my art teacher,” she said.

As I began to help Garramone clean up the objects I had requested to see, she mused on the sentimentality of collecting: “You know, you can see how you change when you keep these things.” Nodding in assent, I remarked that those were my exact feelings when I looked at archived blog posts.