New things. Designer things. Things on sale. Two things for one. Things that will change your life.

We live in a culture of things, where too much emphasis is placed on marketing and advertising and desiring and needing and buying and spending on and showing off new things. But as time passes, these objects inevitably lose their shiny packaged novelty, they age, they break. At the end of the day, what is it then that distinguishes an object from being a mere piece of junk? It’s the personal significance we ascribe, that elevates these material objects out of the realm of the physical and the ordinary… It’s love, and history, that gives them life.

These personal relics, the hand-me-downs, the stolen tokens — these are the things that actually capture my heart. A book of matches stolen from a new crush, a ring passed down from grandma, seashells kidnapped from the beaches of the best summer vacation ever… There is nothing I love more than hearing these sort of sentimental stories from people, and I started this project as a way of capturing some of your gems so that we could all share them.

I am honored to have you trust me to illustrate your tales and your tokens, and it is with absolute pleasure that I get to connect with, and essentially collaborate with, each of you in this way… To give each object a new life in this alternate reality of paint stains and pencil scribbles.

Thanks so much for visiting — if you haven’t already, I hope you will consider submitting a story of your own!

Cheers,
Sirin

Sirin Thada is an artist and illustrator living in Brooklyn, New York. For more information, you can wander over to her other site, or email her at sirin@sirinthada.com.