Karen and I flew to New York's JFK airport on Wednesday, September 24th to attend the 9th annual New York Art Book Fair at MoMA-PS1. We stayed at my good friend Champe's apartment in Chelsea. For the first time in 5 years I did not have a table. Last year I shared a table with Clif Meador, and it was a great experience, both of us selling well. This year, since we only had one new book each, we decided to pass in favor of going to CODEX in February.
This year there was a new attendance record set, 36,000 people came over three and a half days.
For me the highlight of the event was that Tony White, of the Maryland Institute of Art (MICA) who directs the Contemporary Artists Book Conference (which always runs concurrently at the NYABF), had selected my work as the subject of the annual event called
Furthering the Critical Dialogue.
Three panelists discussed and critiqued my work: Leslie Atzmon (of the Open Book Project), Cindy Marsh (of the Women's Building in L.A. fame) and Emily McVarish (well-known book artist, designer and head of the Design program at California Collage of the Arts - CCA). This was a little scary for me and I sort of hid in the last row of the auditorium. But it went well and I was very moved by the insights and comments they made.
Martin took this photo and it really reminds me of an episode of Mystery Theater 3000.
Emily at the lectern discussing
Long Story Short.
Here are the three panelists: Leslie Atzmon, Cindy Marsh and Emily McVarish in front of a blown up image from my book
Sanctus Sonorensis.
We enjoyed celebrating my son Martin's birthday with him and his charming girlfriend Bri, and my other son Nick. We attended the Jeff Koon show at the Whitney, the Nam June Paik retrospective at the Asia Society and then a walk along the HighLine, followed by delicious drinks and dinner in Williamsburg.
