NY Art Book Fair
I picked a random table out of the overwhelming sea of work bubbling around me. It happened to be a publishing company called Irrelevant Press from Oakland, CA, my hometown. Everything they had on the table was thought provoking and unique in some respect. Snakeskins by Addison Bale and Julia Blasius caught my eye because of the opening quote. “Moments of clarity are so rare, I better document this” -Bjork.
This zine is made of a thicker paper, not as thick as card stock but thicker than printer paper. It’s a 6 inch square shape, not a typical zine size. It uses both text and visuals. The first page of the piece was a list of all the discarded titles that didn’t make the cut. I really liked the idea of starting a piece with the titles that didn’t work. Sifting through that material is like taking a quick glance at the writer’s voice and style.
The layout was mostly poetry with collages spliced in between every 5-7 pages. I liked this layout because it made both the visuals and words less overwhelming and acted as a balance between both languages. A lot of the poems were about identity and the separation between the brain and reality. The collages were made of newspaper clippings and bright colored pencils. Although the font size and color remained the same, the poems were spaced to indicate where to pause and indicated a form of pace and rhythm.
I loved how the images of the mundane were vivid and relatable. The juxtaposition of bright colored pencil and collages enhanced the color and imagery of the words. The poems ranged from scenes of watching humpback whales breach at Rockaway Beach to quoting and expanding on Frank Ocean songs. I loved the sense of space in this zine, both in the words and collages. Although I wish there were more visuals, I see how the space between the words and collages can provide the space to process while reading through the zine.
The second zine I picked up was Mix by Jeffrey Cheung. I’ve known about Jeff’s work for a few years now. He founded Unity Press, an Oakland publishing company/ skate collective. Jeffrey has a signature style of bright colors and crudely drawn nudes. His work was something of a cultural symbol back home. It represents an unbending stance on making skate culture more inclusive for people in the LGBTQ+ community.
Jeff is an incredibly friendly person, I bought a tote bag from him and he gave me this zine with a couple stickers. In this zine, there was no writing, common with his work. The images were largely erotic scenes, but always drawn in a very goofy and wholesome manner. The zine was slightly smaller than 8.5 by 11 inches and it was printed on brightly colored construction paper. Jeffrey constructed it so that each page had a different color of construction paper, adding to his already bright style. I think most of the drawings were scans of either pen or marker, but a few of the pages looked like risograph prints. It’s hard to tell because his style is so close to the naturally bright soybean ink that riso machines use.
What I loved about this zine is its simplicity. Jeff was not attempting to say anything larger about navigating skate culture as a POC or as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He made space to present his giddy and poppy style that can stand strongly by itself.
The last piece I picked up at the book fair was something in between a zine and a book. It’s called Dismantling by Neha Choski, published by Hesse Press. It was a standard zine size, but it was bound like a small paperback book. The piece was made of standard paper and printer ink. There were two images of her sculpture in the book, sitting serenely in a patch of grass.
At first, I had no clue what I was looking at. The piece looked like a picnic table. The book is an overview of Choski’s final art instillation at the LAMOA. It is a sculpture made from pieces of the recently deceased LAMOA. It begins with a few pages concerned with the beauty and infinity of the empty page. The feeling of bottomless opportunity, emanating from the raw materials.
Continuing on this idea of space, she opens up about her experience turning on her friend’s phone after he died. For me, this was the most vivid writing in the book. She describes how it felt to sift through the digital remnants of his life and the indescribable void that his absence created. With all of this in mind, she decides she wants to make a piece that’s “all margin”. This is where the inception of the sculpture begins. Using the dismantled pieces of the building, she made a piece that now sits outside in a grass field in Occidental College, where the original structure used to stand.
The second piece of the book continued with the theme of deconstruction, transformation and loss through a collection of assorted poems. The third section was blackout poetry, made from selected lines of text from the essay earlier in the book. I loved the juxtaposition of poems made of new words next to poems using the same words but displayed in different ways. The whole zine was in tune with the playful and malleable nature of language.
The final piece was an interview during the opening show for the sculpture. They talked about everything from themes of deconstruction to how living in LA has impacted her work. I loved that this book provided me with everything I needed to fully appreciate and understand her process and what exactly her sculpture is communicating.
Scenes from the Book Art Fair
