Mark Your Calendar: PostSecret at Bedford Gallery

I don't normally post on much stuff "through the Tunnel" (sorry, Contra Costa folks -- just can't go there), but this is too good to miss: The international phenomenon PostSecret has come to Walnut Creek's Bedford Gallery.

"In November 2004, Frank Warren handed out 3,000 postcards to strangers. He invited people to write down a secret anonymously and mail it to him. Each secret had to be true and something that had never been shared with another person.

Word of the project spread, people began crafting their own homemade postcards, and the artful secrets began arriving from every continent. Today, Warren has received more than 250,000 postcards. Every Sunday, [he] posts secrets on PostSecret.com, which has been viewed more than 220 million times.

The PostSecret exhibition features more than 400 postcards that bring together the most powerful, poignant, and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received. Warren has tapped into the universal stuff of being human, the collective, often unconscious level of existence that defies age, culture, gender, and economics.

Addictively compelling, the cards reveal our deepest fears, desires, regrets, and obsessions. Carefully and creatively constructed by hand, [they] are made from cardboard, old photographs, wedding invitations, and other personal items [that] have traveled to Warren from all over the world."

Warren will be signing copies of his bestselling books A Lifetime of Secrets, My Secret, PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives, and The Secret Lives of Men and Women during the exhibit's opening reception, 8 to 9 p.m. tonight, Wednesday, March 4. The show will be up through April 19.

Bedford Gallery is located at 1601 Civic Dr. in Walnut Creek.

Learn more about the PostSecret project here.

Good, Uh, Reads: Obscene Interiors

Here's some decorating pornography with an emphasis on the porn: In Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor, author Justin Jorgensen has collected images from online personal ads (e.g., craigslist's unintentionally amusing postings from lonely men looking for some quick, no-strings lovin') featuring "shockingly explicit amateur decorating action!"

No worries -- the naked men unashamedly displaying their wares have been obscured so that you can focus instead on the truly cringe-inducing interiors in which they've posed, and on Jorgensen's tongue-in-cheek commentary evaluating these "graphic displays of aesthetic perversion."

A sneak peek:

This just might be the perfect, umm, stocking stuffer for the design-addict-with-a-sense-of-humor on your holiday list. (Hey -- it's respectable enough that designer Todd Oldham penned the foreword, and literary darlings Dave Eggers and Chuck Palahniuk, plus all-around genius Amy Sedaris, gave the book a thumb's up.)

Obscene Interiors is $15 including shipping right here.

Good Reads: Ghostly Ruins

I picked up a copy of Ghostly Ruins: America's Forgotten Architecture by Harry Skrdla in a bookstore recently, and was instantly transfixed by its eerie images of grand homes, hotels, factories, and other stately buildings fallen to ruins.

The book's stark, black-and-white photos are haunting -- but not because of any purported paranormal activity in the abandoned relics. Rather, these structures were damned by our own disregard for our history and architectural treasures.

Take a look:
Bannerman Castle, New York

Danvers State Hospital, Massachusetts

The Book-Cadillac Hotel, Detroit

It's spooky -- and sobering. Find out more about Ghostly Ruins right here.

Good Reads: Inside Havana

In a little gift shop in Carmel a couple of weeks ago, I became completely enraptured by the book Inside Havana, photographed by Andrew Moore.

Its images of refined architecture in a teeming tropical setting, everything fallen into elegant decay, were utterly riveting and eerily beautiful. It's all faded grandeur and color-saturated rubble, like modern ruins populated by a proud -- albeit desperately poor -- people.

Take a look inside:

I would so love to visit Havana someday -- especially with our beloved former almost-next-door-neighbor and Cuban native, Patri, as our guide. (Patri, we miss you!)

In the meantime, I'll make due by soaking up these breathtaking images and dreaming of Cuba.

Check out Inside Havana right here.

And here are some other books about Cuban architecture that are going on my wish list:

* Cuba: 400 Years of Architectural Heritage, by Rachel Carley and Andrea Brizzi

* Cuban Elegance, by Michael Connors and Bruce Buck

* Havana, by Robert Palidori

* The Houses of Old Cuba, by Llilian Llanes and Jean-Luc De Laguarigue

* Living in Cuba, by Simon McBride and Alexandra Black

Good Reads: India Modern

I spied this book the other day, resting on a coffee table in a furniture-store vignette, and quickly became totally absorbed in it.

India Modern, by London-based writer and photographer Michael Freeman, is packed with breathtaking images of an India you never imagined.


Featuring innovative interpretations of classic Indian motifs and styles, the homes, hotels, and other interiors and exteriors Freeman captures maintain an exotic sense of place while also pushing the design envelope.



It's India like you've never seen it, and -- if you're anything like me -- it'll make you want to visit the Land of Spices more than ever.



(Photos by Michael Freeman.)