Rob Walker's Blog, page 24
April 25, 2010
Significant Tweets for Week Ending 2010-04-25
Shevonne scores a Significant Object
The wooden animal (above) about which Meg Cabot wrote for us has changed hands, Cabot reports from the LA Times Book Festival. In the process, she says, the object has helped raise a bunch of money for the Heifer Project. Here's the scoop:
A lovely reader named Shevonne was outbid on my Significant Object… by my mom (who technically shouldn't have even been bidding since she's a relative. But then, you know Moms.)
Later we learned that even though she hadn't won, Shevonne had donated the money...
Significant Objects Meme (9)
In today's New York Times Sunday Book Review, the psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer reviews Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things (Houghton Mifflin), by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee. His conclusion:
To those who need to understand hoarders, perhaps in their own family, "Stuff" offers perspective. For general readers, it is likely to provide useful stimulus for examining how we form and justify our own attachments to objects.
April 23, 2010
Wooden Apple Core + Heidi Julavits story
Object No. 45 of 50 — Significant Objects v3
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Heidi Julavits, here. This is part five of a five-story teamup with the literary magazine The Believer. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]
According to my wife I am a willful misunderstander, but regarding this tendency of mine I understand her feelings too well.
The daughter of dour pragmatists who prefaced many a conversation with the phrase, "In the wake of Rorty," my wife initially...
Tomorrow! A Significant Object in a real, live art show. . .
Our friends at Poketo have the details:
From April 24th to May 15th, "Los Angeles I'm Yours" transforms Space 15Twenty Gallery into a living art market. Filled with an eclectic mix of found objects, these vintage pieces are given new life as over 30 artists reinterpret and reincarnate these objects into art.
"Los Angeles, I'm Yours" will create the same joy of the hunt and sensory overload experienced every month at Los Angeles' famed Rose Bowl outdoor market. Found objects are given new...
Tomorrow! A Signficant Object in a real, live art show. . .
Our friends at Poketo have the details:
From April 24th to May 15th, "Los Angeles I'm Yours" transforms Space 15Twenty Gallery into a living art market. Filled with an eclectic mix of found objects, these vintage pieces are given new life as over 30 artists reinterpret and reincarnate these objects into art.
"Los Angeles, I'm Yours" will create the same joy of the hunt and sensory overload experienced every month at Los Angeles' famed Rose Bowl outdoor market. Found objects are given new...
April 22, 2010
Butter Dish + Trinie Dalton story
No. 44 of 50 — Significant Objects v3
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Trinie Dalton, here. This is part four of a five-story teamup with the literary magazine The Believer. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]
It dumped snowed one evening, so I got out my velvet swatch, antler-handled magnifying glass, and ice crystal identification guide to take to the riverbank at sunset. This was obviously the most glamorous diamond dust flurry of the season, here in my mountain ...
April 21, 2010
Brass Apple + Miranda Mellis story
Object No. 43 of 50 — Significant Objects v3
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Miranda Mellis, here. This is part three of a five-story teamup with the literary magazine The Believer. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]
Once you went on a school field trip and were shown the constellations in the false night of a planetarium. You looked hard trying to see… something more meaningful than the connect-the-dot resemblances to hybrid animals that had so captivated the...
April 20, 2010
Metal Flowers + Justin Taylor story
Object No. 43 of 50 — Significant Objects v3
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Justin Taylor, here. This is part two of a five-story teamup with the literary magazine The Believer. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]
So I bought the metal flowers as a present for Felice, not for any particular reason or occasion — the lack of occasion being itself the point. There were two of them, each with a base of about a square inch and two distinct blossoms. The petals on one o...
April 19, 2010
Significant Objects X The Believer!
We are delighted to announce our latest collaboration! This week, Significant Objects will publish five stories in collaboration with The Believer, the literary magazine that "puts out a welcome mat for pluralism and wide-eyed curiosity," as The New York Times Magazine once put it. Believer co-editor Ed Park, who wrote about a Cow Vase for us last summer, helped make this teamup happen, but we're particularly grateful to Believer managing editor Andrew Leland, who assigned four thrift-store o...
