“There’s a lot of integrity in the spirit of this project,” said Susan O’Malley, assistant curator at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. O’Malley is a Thing subscriber and one of the volunteers busily stuffing hats into boxes and taping them shut. “It’s not expensive, and it allows people to engage with the art in a different way than they would in museums or galleries.”

Subscription costs are kept low by involving artists, friends, and subscribers in events like the wrapping party at Chronicle Books.

“Anyone that we’ve talked to who’s in publishing is like, ‘What? You’re nuts!’” said Rogan. “It’s going to be a different size every time, you don’t know how much it’s going to weigh, you don’t know how much it’s going to cost to produce? That’s ridiculous.”

"But it's supporting itself," says Herschend. "That's the bottom line. It's still a mystery to us."