NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS 1
Fall doesn’t really begin for me until Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair at PS 1. I go every year, and every year it seems like it’s better than the year before.
Something about literacy seems to encourage a particular kind of hob-nobbing, cheerful flamboyance. This year the ambience of fearless bonhomie is perhaps due at least in part to M. Wells , currently in between locations, serving up excellent snacks in the PS1 café.
The first time I went I seem to recall being able to get through the entire thing opening night, despite spending quite some time with a publisher from Pennsylvania who had brought a small collection of large, smooth rocks to keep him company during the fair. It was the extremely pleasant discussion of the life story and occupations of these rocks that made me linger at his table far longer than could be considered efficient. But even without such unhoped for, impossible to imagine opportunity for uplift, in recent years, between the sheer quantity of wonderful things to look at, not to mention interesting people to talk to, it takes me several hours just to get through the zines, requiring more than one visit. Worse things can happen.
While I use a bike to get to the fair, I don’t usually expect to Levitra find anything like Jenny Lin’s Skinny Leg, a hair-raising, and page-raising, pop-up book and zine that tells the story of her bicycle accident and how she lived to ride again. Her pop-up engineering is great and full of imaginatioon, so not surprisingly, we found out we are both fans of Sam Ita. She has one of his books, and I have all of them.
Jenny’s book is published by the excellent B&D Press back at the fair with a new Judith Butler zine in their series “The Life and Times of Butch Dykes a “series of fanzines about the lives and times of amazing women”
It would take all day to mention everything noteworthy, thrilling and delightful, such as Louis M. Schmidt , Cinders Gallery , Fantasy Camp, just to mention a few–but I’d rather get back to the fair for an egg sandwich and a closer look at what’s new from Picturebox.
Bike parking would be nice at some point. Meanwhile, I’m making a note to myself to remember, on a day when our species has got me down: there are way, way more book lovers than there are parking meters and bus stop signs in Queens.
