Special Report: New York Art Book Fair Haul

The New York Art Book Fair opened yesterday to previews, and it'll be going till this Sunday. It's located at Moma PS1. I came across the fair by chance--Dzama's instagram said there would be a dance performance at 7pm yesterday, so I decided to check it out, and stumbled across this enormous expo of books, prints, zines, posters, cards, tote bags, t-shirts, stickers, pins, and random souvenirs (car air fresheners...ashtrays...lumps of coal packaged like candy), at all price ranges, made available to the public by galleries, museums, magazines and random zine-writing punks from the entire world.

Guys. GUYS! It was equal parts an exhibit (so, you know, the inspiring thrill of seeing art), a party (especially last night--the outfits were insane), a shopping spree (and you know how I feel about that) and a scavenger hunt (with things for sale ranging from a dollar to fifty thousand dollars... or more... I knew I was going to find some amazing shit if I looked hard). I cannot recommend this fair enough! And then the PS1 building, an old school with its original staircases and bathrooms, is worth a trip all for itself.

I spent three hours there last night, and then I was back again as soon as they opened today.

Here is what I scored...and some favorite things I saw.

the art fair RULES for picking out the things you like.

free things! yes, the little bag from visual aids contains condoms. clockwise from visual aids: tiny splendor press, broken dimanche press/katie holten, justseeds, humo books, lazy mom.

amazing tote bag from east of borneo-- no two were alike!

maybe my favorite thing from the whole fair: risograph printed booklet about the birds of argentina, from humo. they had so many beautiful prints and pamphlets about nature.

a voyage through the trees by emily rand at hato press.

badger bandana from just seeds.

drizzy inflammatory essays tote bag from art baby girl (the coolest!!!).

Tote from Modern Women.

 Boxing lapel pin from the zine tent...
All this stuff was far too expensive. And I could have spent SO MUCH MORE. Instead, here are some photos of other favorite things.

in the zine tent

the chairs all say, "accept the cookies," so...

the dzama dance that started it all

"symbolic pins," they looked so nice clustered on a plain black t-shirt

sun-emblazoned string backpack, so lovely

in the ps1 stairwell

posters for sale at just seeds, i love that they are "committed to making print and design work that reflects a radical social, environmental, and political stance."

above: some more bandanas at just seeds. (i bought the badger one!)

in the entire immense fair, nothing was quite as enthralling as these gorgeous screenprinted and marbled art books from cinders gallery. their whole table was perfect and i can't wait to visit the gallery at 66 washington ave here in brooklyn.

above--more from cinders gallery.

guerrilla girls!

an amazing tablecloth tapestry somewhere...

hilary l. pecis's gorgeous accordian books--she had many of different stars and other natural phenomena, each page a photo taken at a slightly different time.

the tiny splendor table in the zine tent was another favorite. so much work that reminded me of my amazing friend kayla e...i'm going to tell her about them! i greatly desired this gorgeous zine.

john marriott in the zine tent had lots of funny stuff, including a fake "we are happy to serve you" paper coffee cup, with lots of, like, scissoring greek-urn people, that said "it's our service to pleasure you." the weather box plays a tune based on the weather conditions of a certain day. the "rustic futurist" air freshener looks like a cell phone tree...

art in the dome.

a genius idea by printed matter--sunprints made from crumpled paper

at the printed matter table. every page simply read, "why?"

"worm, i'm going to stomp on you." "thank you goddess."

these women also had a version of ben franklin's "don't tread on me." it showed a stiletto stepping on a snake, with the legend "please tread on me."

i bought that little green book at hato press. their colorful table on the third floor was also a highlight.

hato press.

visual aids. 

i love that geometric/floral wallpaper. one piece was $4! maybe i should go back tomorrow...

i loved the simplicity and consistency of the book design at datz press. one of my favorite items that i couldn't afford to buy was amanda marchand's book (lower left) called "night garden." i never thought about photographing flowers in the dark... the woman at the datz press table told me that marchand created the book as her mother was dying from cancer.

ps: another haul, and
favorite things on the web

Recent Favorite Books, Part 5

Here are all the recent favorite books, and here are some from my summer reading regimen, which, evidently, is "Women + Sebald."

The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink
"Now, in town, you never know whether the neighbors are home. Even in the backcountry of Yosemite, there are those other people with a pass. Nearly anywhere you go, someone might hear or see you. But not on a levee by the Elbe two miles from the nearest town in dense fog at six o'clock on a Sunday morning in September. They say in space no one can hear you scream, but why would a person with a sense of dignity scream anywhere else?" (93)

The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald
"This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was. The  desolate field extends all around where once fifty thousand soldiers and ten thousand horses met their end within a few hours. The night after the battle, the air must have been filled with death rattles and groans. Now there is nothing but the silent brown soil. Whatever became of the corpses and mortal remains? Are they buried under the memorial? Are we standing on a mountain of death? Is that our ultimate vantage point? Does one really have the much-vaunted historical overview from such a position?" (125)

 from the museum about dunwich in orford...

The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald
"When I wake up, I see the jars of preserves ranged on the chest and in the cold compartments of the tiled stove. I try in vain to work out what they mean. They don't mean anything, says Mama, they're just cherries, plums and pears." (206)

The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits
"I am no longer immune, however, to the occasional plummet in time altitude. A plummet happened the other night. I found myself lying in bed and thinking about Mexican wineglasses, the green kind with the air bubbles. They are the size of goblets. I'd put a lot of identity stock, at one time in my life, in Mexican wineglasses. I'd bought some in my twenties, and they represented a pinnacle achievement in self-realization. Thinking of these wineglasses reminded me of a trip I'd taken through Mexico with a boyfriend when we were both in our twenties; we'd driven a two-piston rental through mountain ruts. We slept in fields. We emerged in a town with white walls and cafés, and were there also Mexican wineglasses? Did I buy mine there? I don't think so. I only remember a photo I took in that town of a white adobe wall and, rising above it, a crucifix atop a church dome. I was not religious, yet the photograph was so religious that I felt I shouldn't or couldn't be as fond of it as I was. But now, lying in bed and thinking about wineglasses, I found myself thinking of this photo, and the girl who took it, and the town--I'll never know its name--and I felt the kind of longing for that girl/town/photo I feel for my children at night when they are asleep." (59)

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
"And then, with a slow, luxuriant thrill, I realized that everything was different about the house I was in. It was the hawk. I shut my eyes. The hawk had filled the house with wildness as a bowl of lilies fills a house with scent." (65)


And, the best for last (I went crazy for this book, which I found much more satisfying than Bluets).

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
"If you're looking for sexual tidbits as a female child, and the only ones that present themselves depict child rape or other violations (my favorite books in my preteen years: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Clan of the Cave Bear, The World According to Garp, as well as the few R-rated movies I was allowed to see--Fame, most notably, with its indelible scene of Irene Cara being asked to take her shirt off and suck her thumb by a skeezy photographer who promises to make her a star), then your sexuality will form around that fact. There is no control group. I don't even want to talk about "female sexuality" until there is a control group. And there never will be." (66)

"But whatever I am, or have since become, I know now that slipperiness isn't all of it. I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure. The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again--not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life." (112)