"Story Gathering Boxes"
1972-ongoing

The first Story Gathering Boxes I made contained 52 wooden tablets. I then placed paper tablets instead of wood into the boxes and asked people to write their own stories on topics like: mother stories, father stories, story of your life, philosophy of your life, etc. I hoped this direct approach would draw out immediate and unguarded responses that would reveal our collective experience and knowledge. I also hoped these boxes would come to hold the living myths of our time - the spontaneous real life stores and attitudes of a people.

Sequential Religious Box contained wooden tablets, each with a different image in various mediums including water color, gesso, ink, paint and carving. Wooden tablets are 6" x 6" and the box is 8" x 17" x 19", 1972.

Childhood: What was it like to be a girl? What was it like to be a boy? Begun in 1995, on-going "Whether reading the stories of others or writing one's own, this piece provokes a jarring encounter with collective notions about gendered sex roles." John Ewing review of Edelson's work, Blue Star Art Space, Artlies summer 2001