Lindy McCool

All I Know I Learned from Family Guy

The owner of the house divorced her husband and left. But he remained there, living alone for years. We were called to clean it out. In the back of the shed, in a tote covered with dust and debris, was a photo album. “Happy 21st birthday David Scroggins,” was written on the inside. Photographs of childhood, family, and memories decorated each plastic page. No one would be coming to retrieve it, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.

I have long been troubled with not only the proliferation of objects I encounter in my job, but also their dismissal. What makes an object disposable? Why do people choose to leave behind some things but not others? The burden of deliberating the fate of these objects is taxing: It weighs on my mind. There is no easy solution to these choices. I feel responsible for the memories of someone I’ve never met. And I feel unconsciously responsible for the protection of these items.

The image, once a sacred object, has become a burden. People want to run from images--go outside, be surrounded by nature, free themselves. While many are dismissed as aesthetically valueless or literally useless, I see them as significant. They are part of our world, our lives, and our minds. A 30 pixel PNG is not wasted data to me. Like garbage left behind mindlessly, images are dismissed without thought. I can see their dismissal and I collect them. These images deserve the same consideration as a tossed family photograph.

My job has shown me beauty in the most repulsive. I’ve grown fondness towards dead rats or moldy food. To collage is take the garbage of our everyday lives and bring it to a lush tapestry of color and light. The physical and the virtual integrated. What if we choose to love ugliness and unirony? Espouse authenticity and embrace sincerity? What if we could love things as they are, without needing to change them through cynicism? What if we could love things, purely and dearly, as they are?

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