Spend more than five minutes in a suburban neighborhood and you'll see it: the ubiquitous pile of refuse

 

discarded at the curb, waiting for trash day and its final journey to the landfill.  Peg Rothschild sees

 

something different. Where many might think they're looking at an old chair, a defunct lamp or some

 

unrecognizable mechanical artifact, Peg sees faces and hands and eyes and ears.

 

Frying pans become heads; bedsprings hair and a pair of old watches stylish earrings.

 

We the basement-purgers and garage-cleaners of modern America, are Peg's unwitting collaborators,

 

providing her with the raw materials she uses to create whimsical and irreverent visions of ourselves. 

 

And it isn't just the occasional pile of garage-sale leftovers that finds its way into Peg's studio. 

 

Peg collects stuff, debris, litter, junk, call it what you want, on an industrial scale, at places like the Dekalb

 

Farmer's Market Recycling Center, where she redefines the term. Enlisting yet more unknowing

 

collaborators, Peg avails herself of the Center's workers, who speak a variety of

different languages other than English, as itinerant harvesters of urban refuse.

 

Peg always leaves the Center with more than she brought and the Center's workers scratching their heads.

 

So go ahead: put all that trash out at the curb. Chances are it won't be there in the morning.