Co-Founder and Co-Editor with Will Rogan 2007-2017

THE THING was an experimental publication created in collaboration with Will Rogan as part of an artist residency. We saw it as a quarterly periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers were invited to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text. The object is reproduced and hand wrapped at wrapping parties and then mailed to the homes of the subscribers with the help of the United States Postal Service.

It began as part of an artist residency in San Francisco’s Southern Exposure. Will and I had met in grad school at UC Berkeley and discovered our mutual affinity for quarterlies. He was a librarian at SFAI for five years and I had been a high school teacher for five years. WE were both interested pushing the boundaries of publication. Our plan was to create a 1 year publication with four artists, but from the very start the project generated so much interest and international excitement that we found ourselves running a publication complete with a brick and mortar storefront and a staff of four individuals. After 10 years, 34 issues, 59 projects and countless live events, we decided to end the publication in order to pursue our individual projects. We are still working together on a less ambitious new project, and hope to launch it at some point in 2021.

CONTRIBUTORS: have included John Baldessari, Dave Eggers,  Miranda July, Allora & Calzadilla, Starlee Kine, Matthew Higgs,  Kota Ezawa, Trisha Donelly, Tucker Nichols, Lucy Pullen, Ryan Gander,  Allora & Calzadilla, Mike Mills, Tauba Auerbach, Jonathan Lethem, Brian Roeittinger, Gabrielle Orozco,  Trevor Paglen, and Amanda Ross-Ho. The issues have ranged from pull-down window shades with text silk-screened onto them, to wall clocks, to boomerangs.

PRESS, RESIDENCIES AND ART FAIRS: With an international subscriber base of 1000 plus, THE THING has been featured on PRI’s Marketplace, Frieze Magazine, the SF Chronicle, the New York Times and the T magazine, the LA Times, Readymade, Art21 Blog, the New Yorker Blog, and Artforum. THE THING has run projects at Southern Exposure in San Francisco, Artists Space in NY and Lisson Gallery in London and SFMOMA.  It has participated in art fairs in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Paris and Tokyo.

COLLECTIONS: THE THING is in the collections of the The Getty, National Gallery of Canada, The McEvoy Fine Art Collection, Kadist, SFMOMA, UC Berkeley Library, The San Francisco Art Institute, the San Francisco Public Library, and the Baltimore Museum of Modern Art.