Garbage Sculpture Plan - "A Time of When I Was Very Small"

Just yesterday, I went to SCRAP and initially had ideas to work with fabrics or other tattered, thrashed materials.  When I walked in, my idea was initially fulfilled, finding some yarn and other scraps of fabric.  It wasn’t until I walked over to the wood-scrap section where I found this piece:

 

This plaque made me stop and put me in a completely different place.  I put everything else I had collected away and changed my idea right then and there.  My idea for my sculpture now is to collect what people had as memories (which may be forgotten now) and document the “life” of the name of the person on the back of the plaque through their “trash” and personal items.  I found objects such as the wood shelving, black dowels, and page protectors, which will work out perfectly to create a protruding “book of memories”.  I will be taking what I initially found and attaching more to it through the use of narrative.  I will place the items into the page protectors to “preserve” those memories and the meanings they hold.  Something interesting that I noticed once I got home was that many of the objects I attained seemed to be from the same person (by their handwriting and similarities in the objects).  The pieces in my collection have put me in a different space ever since I gravitated towards them.  Part of me wonders what would be lost if these items just ended up in the dump and I think that is what my project boils down to; more than just the waste of these items added to the garbage, what happened to the meanings they once held for people.  

I think I gravitated toward these objects because I am interested in the memories of others and strange mementos that people hold onto, and then get rid of them like they are nothing.  The things that haunt/sadden me the most are the boxes of photos, many with family memories, for pennies.  Most people, including the original owners of the objects, would see those items as worthless trash, but my mind explores into the deeper meanings of them and I get very interested in them.  The history and stories they tell could be endless, some happy, and others sad.

I plan to go back on Tuesday to find more objects, as well as collect things I may find along the way.  I feel that what I have so far is definitely a good start and might not need more to express itself, but we will see.