Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

Like I told you on the phone the other day, we’ve been talking a lot about collections in my objects class. Of course, I end up giggling because I think about these conversations in the context of the penultimate collector in my life—you. I’ve made a partial list of your collections that I could recall off the top of my head in class:
• Music postcards
• Tacky 60’s postcards
• Tacky record sleeves
• Mini pianos
• Figures with instruments
• Mcdonalds toys (defunct?)
• Star wars ship figures
• Old lego ships
• Star trek figures
• Matchbox cards
• Drummer figures
• Beatles memorabilia
• Beatles books, videos, etc
• Michael Jackson music
• David Roth songs
• Stamps
• Coins
• Pipes
• Fender hats
• Hawaiian shirts
• Shot glasses
• Interesting glasses
• Bottle openers
• Guitars
• Things with unknown uses
• Family history
• Rutles things
• JBB songs
• Own songs
• Guitar picks
And this is just a partial list. You have more collections than I can even begin to comprehend. For example, what is your collection of one!? I don’t even know what object you could be talking about. Maybe it’s the piano or something.

Before this class, I had never really thought about how my relationship to objects is so dependent on your relationship to them. After all, what kid grows up in a house with collections of everything, in custom boxes or on custom shelves, out on display.

I don’t fully understand why you’re driven (or drawn) to collecting in the way that you do, but I have some reflections on how this has changed my interactions with objects, and how it has driven me to be more of the way that I am about objects.

Your collections are a lot about categories—categories that primarily reflect your interests, but also just reflect things that you think are cool, like neat glasses, the Simpsons and legos. A lot of your collections are about music, because that is what you first and foremost love.

We’ve talked in class about collections as a way of orienting ourselves in the world of stuff—and also about ways to have control over the stuff around us. Your collections are the ultimate control. They are all so well organized, and you know a lot of details about most of them (if not all). Many of your collections are also intended to inform you even more about your other collections, like your collection of books about guitars. That certainly grounds you in relationship to your collection of guitars.

I’ve ended up with a confused relationship about objects. Obviously, they are all that I think about, but at the same time there are many reasons ways in which I want to (and sometimes do) reject them to their core, as representations of our consumption. I love beautiful objects in form and in function. I am most interested in collecting things which serve a purpose.

When I was younger, my collections mirrored yours in a much more obvious way. My collections of 3” horses, of dollhouse furniture (including full sets of hand-made doll dishes), of lego castles, of playmobiles, of little figurines and whatever else I collected. Now, I’ve reduced my collections in a very different way—to things that are practical and useful in my life. I have a collection of clothes (include of hooded sweatshirts and of blazers), a collection of pyrex orange daisy bowls & serving dishes, a collection of mod salt and pepper shakers, and of course my collection of Heywood Wakefield furniture. I am looking for beauty and function, which is an exact reflection of what I look for in my design work as well. I don’t think I have the self awareness at this point in my life to determine how this type of collecting reflects on how I feel about myself in relation to this stuff—these are things that surround me, but I’m not sure they define me.

That’s another point. You and Mom have both been influential in selecting (or forcing?) things that define me…and I have likewise ended up defining you in the manner of things. Like that poster Julia made when she was little of “Things my Mommy likes”, part of your persona is defined by your love of Beatles things, and by your collection of musical figurines. And you’ve defined my persona partially by my collection of pineapples and pirates, which in reality is not a collection at all but an accumulation of objects presented to me by other people that ended up becoming a collection representing the interpretations of the people around me. I don’t see these things representing me that much—the pineapples, after all, started as joke—but they have come to define me by the collections that you’ve helped to create around me.

One particular thing we’ve been talking about in class is the way that collections become absorbed into museums. While you’re in the process of collection Kramer family history for the Kramer family museum, you’re also creating your own museum—a very particular documentation of the strange collection of popular culture and artifacts that appeal to you. I’m always impressed with your interests and with the care you take to preserve them—it will be quite the site for an archeologist to unearth years in the future.

Thanks for all your objects. I’ll write to you again about them as we keep going with this class.

Love,

Elizabeth