A week after P.S. 1 and Printed Matter's annual book fair, I'm still not half way through looking at the stack of books I brought home. If you weren't able to attend the fair, didn't manage to see every table, or if simply want more leftovers from the annual Thanksgiving of artist books read on to see some of my favorite tables and publishers.
ABC Artist Book Cooperative: ABC is an international network of artists making print-on-demand books. As to be expected with such a diverse group of artists, ABC had a great range of books: Travis Shaffer's conceptual piece, AB:C, was hand printed with a pen the moment I bought it. Burkhard von Harder's My Anonymous Cold War Archive has an understated charm; I took home Folder 0504 Images 17/19-24 (gymnasts frozen twirling in mid-air). And there were a number of new titles from the prolific artist/bookmaker Victor Sira; I got a copy of Voyeur A Midsummer which pairs beautifully reproduced images of couples copulating in wooded havens with images of mushrooms, butterflies and an all-seeing owl.
Roma Publications: Founded in 1998 by artist Mark Manders and graphic designer Roger Willems, Roma makes impeccably designed books covering a wide array mediums. Three titles that caught my eye: a preview copy of Dirk Braeckman's dark and brooding new monograph, Spomenik, a series of abandoned monuments in the former Yugoslavia, by Jan Kempenaers and Aglaia Konrad's Italian quarry images titled Carrara.
No Work: No Work is a series anonymous collaborative projects. They recently released Blotter, an oversized newsprint edition of found mugshots that is printed with so much ink that you'll leave your finger prints everywhere. They've also started a zine series that pairs their photographs of New York; the latest version focuses on the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Hassla: Artist and publisher David Schoerner founded Hassla almost five years ago, producing twenty publications to date with some of my favorite artists. The two most recent, Sydney Jonas Walk by Colin Snapp and Humours by Kathryn Herr, are a brilliant addition.
Gottlund Verlag: The fact that every box, cover, stamp, and sewn section at Gottlund Verlag is done by hand blows my mind, and every project that founder Nicholas Gottlund takes on is worth the effort. Three works that caught my eye: a preview copy of Coley Brown's new book A Recurring Dream, Salad Days, the first in a series of books of Ed Panar's grungy high school archive, and a box of Nicholas's own c-prints that are a working edit for his forthcoming book Possession.
Dashwood Books: Beautifully cluttered, and always eclectic. Dashwood released one of their publications, Jacko Weyland's work on 70's and 80's US ski culture,The Powder.
BAS: The Istanbul based BAS was started by Banu Cennetoglu as an artist space with a focus on producing, collecting and displaying books. BAS began working with artist Philippine Hoegen in 2006 to form Bent Artists' Books who this year brought an amazing series of six never before seen comic books by the Armenian artist Masist Gul called Kaldirim Destani - Kaldirimlar Kurdunun Hayati (Pavement Myth - The Life of the Pavement's Wolf). I was also happy to see a few new editions of Banu's own zine 15 Scary Asian Men.
