Roaming: a column | somewhere between observation and critique | art and sound and movement by David Bernabo
***
A cement truck in silhouette, a person applying eyeliner, an infinite mess of coiled twigs and branches.
These are images from Bertrand Fleuret’s Landmasses and Railways, a book that I believe I purchased from Melissa Cantanese of Spaces Corners at the PGH Photo Fair. Founded in 2012 by Evan Mirapaul and aided by Casey Droege, who became co-director in 2016, the annual PGH Photo Fair brought photographers and photobook publishers from all over the world to Pittsburgh. For five of its seven fairs, the event was held in the Hall of Sculpture of Carnegie Museum of Art, and I’d wager that the fair provided a large boost for the art of photography in the minds of Pittsburghers.
I’m thinking about the PGH Photo Fair, because I’m attending what one could consider to be its successor, the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair (PABF). The fair is the result of the minds of Caroline Kern, Chas Wagner, Emma Honcharski, Mary Tremonte, and Jacquelyn Johnson, all artists and/or curators, in their own right. It’s a two-day affair – September 9 and 10, 2023 – and I am attending the opening day. The fair mainly features U.S.-based publishers, bookstores, and artists, with a heavy emphasis on Pittsburgh entities, but there’s also an international presence with Homie House Press, which has dual bases in Milan, Italy and Baltimore, MD.
I am equipped with cash. At the ATM, I take out $120. I intend to buy art books. It’s a luxury that is probably irresponsible, but over the past few years, since COVID-19 squirmed its way across the world, my collection of art and art-adjacent books has grown. Surely, I must feed the collection.
In the early months of 2020, aided by unemployment – most of my videography clients were museums or restaurants – and the accompanying $600/week stimulus checks, I haphazardly and impulsively bought the occasional book. Then I bought more than the occasional book. Then I signed up for book subscriptions. Did you know that NYC-based publisher Primary Information will send you all the books they publish in a year for 125 bucks? I’ve known this for three years, or 25 books.
My book collection has grown alongside Pittsburgh’s slow accumulation of quality, independent bookstores. For over two decades, the volunteer-run Big Idea Bookstore has been supplying me with plenty of Eugene Thacker and Mark Fisher titles and all manner of anarchist reads from AK Press and Freedom Press. In the early 2010s, Spaces Corners, run by Melissa Catanese and Ed Panar, opened a storefront, or rather a second-floor walkup, that introduced me and probably others to photobooks. White Whale Bookstore and a smattering of independent, but more general interest stores also opened as the Borders and Barnes and Noble-led stranglehold relented. More recently, Fungus Books & Records and Bottom Feeder Books have been my go-tos.
Fungus was a revelation. October 2, 2021 was opening day. Within their first few weeks, when the store seemed more like a pop-up than a Regent Square fixture, I greedily purchased titles by explorer of esoteric mysticism Erik Davis, dancer Carolyn Brown, and artist David Wojnarowicz, thinking the supply would surely run out. (It hasn’t.) I also found Nicole Gagne’s Sonic Transports, a holy grail book that I never thought I’d see as Nicole told me that most of the remaining copies were destroyed in a 2012 fire.
Ninth months later, Bottom Feeder Books opened. Behold, rows and rows of mid-20th century avant-garde literature and art books at fair prices. Youthful dreams of owning multiple Phaidon, Guggenheim, and MoMA publications became a possibility and, soon, a reality. Books about Fischli and Weiss, Robert Smithson, and Marcel Broodthaers received cover-to-cover reads.
I don’t know if the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair is a result of this recent prevalence of all manner of weird, rare, and art-filled printed media, but I think a few of these stores could take some credit for priming portions of today’s audience.
Here in the Hall of Sculpture at Carnegie Museum of Art, there is a hum of chatter and footsteps. A sizable crowd is circling a dozen plus long tables tended by artists, publishers, and booksellers. Photobooks, art books, accordion-style sculpture-as-book, risograph prints, and screen printed collections pop against the uniformly black tablecloths. There’s also pamphlets and zines. Cassettes. Photographs. There is an order to the layout of the fair. Somebody thought this through. The aisleways are spacious, but not stark. I can move freely from vendor to vendor without stress. Happily, there’s no soundtrack beyond the guests and vendors, allowing for easy conversation. But before I can browse, I head to the museum’s theater for the first of three panels.
Each of the three panels focuses on a different topic: Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo and Erin Zona discuss their work as artists, with Zona providing a fascinating history of the Women’s Studio Workshop. Leo Hsu (Silver Eye Center for Photography), Kate Joranson (Frick Fine Arts Library at the University of Pittsburgh), and Brittany Reilly (Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation) discuss their efforts to maintain, process, and grow archives. To cap it off, artist Christopher Kardambikis hosts four artist/publishers on a live recording of the Paper Cuts podcast.
An unexpected but welcomed surprise throughout all three talks is the focus on archives. This topic is certainly expected during the “Archives at the Center: Where and How It Lives!” panel where Reilly provides an insightful account on how she began to process artist Aaronel deRoy Gruber’s studio materials and finished works. The phrase, “archiving as unboxing” stuck out to me. It evokes creativity and a process of discovery that may seem foreign to the notion of archives, to what some might consider a scientific or structured process. Executive Director of Silver Eye Center for Photography Leo Hsu takes us back to Silver Eye’s origins as the Blatant Image Gallery in Oakland, an artery of the late 1970s Pittsburgh punk scene. And Kate Johanson discusses the artist book collection at Pitt’s Frick Fine Arts Library, bringing the collection to life by placing artist books in dialogue with one another.
But the other two sessions of the day also frequently swerve into discussions about the importance of archives. There is talk of how artists archive their work, how archives will inform future generations, how forests are archives, and how the body is an archive. Personally, I’m here for all of that, but if we want to get technical, the term “archive” has a more limited definition. The Society for American Archivists defines “archive” as “a physical or digital collection of historical records.” Sure, a few other variations are listed, like “a conceptual construct of a storehouse of recorded knowledge with outsized social and political significance that generally controls meaning and discourse and serves as a simulacrum of truth and fact,” which leaves the door ajar to ideas of a non-archive being considered an archive. But no matter how one interprets the definition of “archive,” the panel discussions exhibit an interest in showing how art reflects experience and how the art book could be a place to collect those experiences.
In between talks, I browse and buy. Artist Katana Lippart has a nice collection of handmade books – an accordion-style collection of photographs and a sculptural book made from cyanotypes. I opted for a slim volume of printed collages. I’m guilty of criticizing arts patrons who buy paintings that match the color of their walls, but the forest green, linen-patterned cover of Lippart’s Untitled (portfolio of collages) did match my largely green outfit.
Christopher Kardambikis is a friend from my undergraduate days – yes, this event retelling is full of conflicts of interest. While living in Pittsburgh some years ago, Kardambikis, alongside Jasdeep Khaira, published the amazing Encyclopedia Destructica books. These were impressive, handmade volumes that pulled together a lot of Pittsburgh’s local scene. I have a number of their publications and am happy to add Kardambikis’s I’ve Seen The Future, a handbound book of risograph prints that provides insight into various methods of divination.
After hearing Homie House Press’s Adriana Monsalve speak during the podcast panel, I pick up Noura Tafeche + Caterina Ragg’s BUNCH | ﻋﺼﺒﻴـة, which collects five years of protests and disruptions that center balloons. Killing Stone is a zine by Eriko Hattori that I’ve seen in part on Instagram. It’s great to have a copy and admire Hattori’s intricate line work and the saturated colors of publisher Misfeed Press’s risograph printer. I also swipe up Micah H. Weber’s Reservoir-2, published by Cucuy.Studio. A disclaimer on the copyright page reads, “a constellation of collage, biography, and worrisome theory.” Being a fan of Weber’s films and sound design, I’m excited to dig into this one.
I log six hours at the fair, but there is still more to see and do, like book signings. Having purchased these two titles before the fair, I don’t solicit Fungus co-owner Ed Steck to sign his fascinating new poetry book A Place Beyond Shame, nor do I ask Spaces Corners co-owner Melissa Cantanese to sign her deeply engrossing photobook The Lottery. I also miss the workshops where you could learn bookbinding with artist Brent Nakamoto or peruse zines with Jill Chisnell of CMU Libraries.
For the first attempt at this kind of fair, I’d call it a certified success. The event is well-advertised, and there is a healthy flow of patrons throughout the entire day. I’m not sure of the numbers, but on this first day, the organizers hand out 400-some masks. (Note: I greatly appreciate this pro-mask stance. Covid cases are climbing, unfortunately.) The vendors that I spoke to seem happy, selling enough to make the long days worthwhile. And beyond these rough quantitative measurements, the curation of the vendors and their offerings is impressive. You could start or add to your art book collection for as little as $1 or as much as several hundred dollars. There is also differentiation from other Pittsburgh fairs. The PABF mostly avoided the often design-heavy aesthetic that you find at Handmade Arcade, and while there was overlap with the Pittsburgh Zine Fair and PGH Photo Fair of years past, zines and photography didn’t dominate the conversation.
Pittsburgh’s art scenes are always in a state of transition, but we consistently lack two things: outlets for critique and a market for artists to sell work. I’m optimistic that Petrichor (the website you are currently reading) can reintroduce some level of critique to the conversation, and I’m happy to think that PABF is an event that transfers art to the public and money to artists. Certainly, it gets a bit difficult to determine how much money in artists’ hands is enough. Often the profit margin on self-made or short-run artist books is slim or non-existent. Factor in the modest PABF table fee plus travel, food, and accommodations, and netting a profit at the book fair can be a difficult feat.
But in speaking to a few of the vendors, the art book fair isn’t solely about turning a profit. Yes, for some, profit is a necessity, but for others, the fair is a chance to leave the studio and be social, to interact with similarly-minded local and national artists and makers, or to have an excuse to dance at the afterparties. Some vendors are interested in exhibiting art outside the gallery model. Some just want to see their work leave their dwellings and find new contexts in someone else’s home. Whatever draws vendors to PABF, there seems to be enough sales and enough goodwill generated to ensure that artists and audiences will return next year. In my mind, the fair is an essential addition to Pittsburgh’s arts infrastructure, and I hope it continues for a long time.
David Bernabo is an oral historian, musician, artist, and independent filmmaker with a deep interest in local history and its repercussions on today’s Pittsburgh.
PETRICHOR 