In 2012, I heard about this Pinterest thing. It was described as an internet bulletin board where people shared images. First of all, I had no interest in becoming a shareaholic with millions of anonymous people. After all, I was a curatorial collector of imagery. Plus, I already had floor-to-ceiling black-framed bulletin boards in my office, my bedroom, and my kitchen. Snubbing the whole enterprise, I went about my business of tearing out thousands upon thousands of photographs from shelter and fashion magazines.
Over the course of a year, several of my friends told me to get real, plus get over my bad self, and check out a certain "cktnon" on Pinterest. I did. Among 45 boards with titles like "photo bitter," "interior favorite," and "snap shot daily," I clinked on "collage." There I found a portrait of a man in a suit whose head had become a collection of black and white polka dots. OK. In less than the instant it took to click, I was hooked.
As of today, I have 41,000 followers. Linda Moes from the Netherlands is one of them. Linda has 224 followers. If you were to click on her board "Black and White," you would see a portrait of a young woman with a parakeet in her mouth, a pair of black and white gloves with fingers at least two feet long, and a hand dipped in black paint.
As soon as I saw Linda's pin of a brick fireplace in an empty room I'd already pinned (see above), I wondered if she'd repinned my pin of the same fireplace. Or maybe she's pinned it from Julie, or from Sarah from Remodelista, who'd repinned my pin of the fireplace in the first place? Anyway, you get the drift.
There's that, and then there's the addiction part. This morning after my first cup of coffee I came across a photograph of a woman with a brown paper bag over her head that said, "I'm Pretty." I pinned it. I saw a closed eye with the words "The End" tattoed on the lid. I pinned it. When Duke, my son, yelled he was going to be late for school, I ran downstairs, grabbed the keys as fast as I could before I remembered I'd forgotten my iPad. In the car waiting for the bus I pinned Vintage Coffee Bean Bag Chairs, after a photograph of a grain elevator in Western Kansas by Wright Morris, and an amazing map of the United States of America. Whew!
Andy Warhol said, "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." Pinterest is better. Everyone shares their dreams visualized in an eternal cyberspace community where all are welcome and no one is turned away. Ever. It's a place where wordless juxtapositions become a divine form of editing; a place where products are not the point, feeling is. Like Heaven, Pinterest is endless. But what's even better, Pinterest is experienced "in the moment," not in the promise of the future, or bittersweet memories of the past.
Ed. Note: See Diane Keaton's Pinterest boards here and her past Remodelista posts (featuring her own house, black and white dots and stripes included) at: The Artful Home Library and Palette & Paints with Diane Keaton.