Third Hand is an anti-consumerist marketplace for the recycled, reused and re-appropriated. Any item not previously worn or utilized is not welcome here.
Third Hand is more than a thrift store because its purpose is greater than simply saving you a buck. Third Hand is not a “vintage” store because it is not concerned with fashion. Third Hand seeks to subvert the detrimental and incessant consumerist trend of First Hand consumerism by shaking some sense into the spellbound consumer and exorcising them of their impulsive desires for the shiny and new. The Third Hand philosophy strives to awaken the man or woman who is, in the words of Schoupenhaur, "In continual desire without satisfaction". Satisfaction is only to be achieved through a transformation in consumer understanding, a drastic shift in the beliefs that attach value to materiality. This brings us to the Third Hand aesthetic which exalts the timeworn and places a greater value on clothing or art works that tell a story through their frayed and tired features than on fresh-out-of-the-factory items that imitate these qualities, qualities that can only be produced through an intimate negotiation with time.
Third Hand encourages contributors to challenge the common buyer-seller exchange by sharing a brief memory that they experienced with the item that is being posted for sale. The memories that are bound to an item are worth more than the item itself and by offering up just one of them the contributor has the authority to turn a dreadfully cold and impersonal bartering process into a brief but relatively intimate relationship between buyer and seller.
The Third Hand Philosophy is continued on the blog page, where contributors are encouraged to share their artistic philosophy, life philosophy, or just about anything they damn well please.
"Immanence" added to Art Works!
36" x 48" mixed media on stretched canvas
Recent Blog Posts
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A specter is haunting your shopping malls—the specter of the Third Hand!
“The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shinning line that coursed through the campus…The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets and shoes, stationary and books, sheets and pillows, quilts with rolled-up rugs; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartoons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins. Peanut crème patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn, the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic Mints… This assembly line of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of a year, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a nation."
-Don Delillo
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