1/Edition

Haul of business cards

This year was the first edition of 1/Edition (see what I did there? eh?) at the Metro Convention Center, and, having to do with prints and books as it does, and prints and books being the stuff of my dreams, I had to go take a look. There were a ton of artists, collectives, galleries, bookstores, and more, and it was very exciting to see what everyone was doing!

I ended up getting a couple of - I want to say artist books, but would these be considered "books by authors" or "artist books"? I'm going to go with artist books.

Mini haul of books - there were so many more I wanted to bring home!

There were a bunch more books - part of the first run of a reprint of the Moomin novels, for example, except I really don't need to start reading Moomin from the first print - that I wanted to bring home with me, but I held back because of reasons stated before to do with my bookshelf & my growing collection of books.

Animals with Sharpies by Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber is incredibly engaging, in a tongue-in-cheek way that acknowledges some of the different characteristics of the animals portrayed in the book through the messages they are made to write down. Some of the animals are almost, if not, unrecognizable, which adds another layer of complexity to the images: it becomes a matching game and a test of your knowledge of the animal realm. Admittedly, my own knowledge is rather pitiful, and so some of the animals that are shown in smaller parts remain unknown to me, but the messages remain, baffling the viewer (or at least myself, because I am unaware of the speaker/writer and its relation to what is written) while at the same time providing a window to accessing the contents of the book regardless of the reader's depth of understanding of the animal kingdom. Go get yourself a copy. Immediately.

One Sky Star World Team Alliance by Stefan Marx, on the other hand, consists entirely of illustrations of airplanes that the artist either has been on or saw throughout his travels, or so the person at the Dashwood Books booth told me. The illustrations charmed my socks off, and started my string of purchases at the convention; some of the planes are portrayed in full, some are cut off, while some still feature in a 2-page spread, and that is part of what makes them so lovely: it's not just a collection of illustrations of planes, so much as a collection of the memories and places in the form of planes, the portrayal of which differs depending on the artist at the time.

There was one more book I wanted to purchase very much, although I couldn't justify it to myself then since it's a commercially produced book that I should in theory be able to purchase at a much later date: The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Anderson & Yayoi Kusama. I had seen parts of it on Brain Pickings and desperately wanted to read it in full through, say, my local library, but as expected, we don't own a copy. Nor am I saying we should carry it necessarily, considering the sort of book this is and the size of its readership and us being a public library. This retelling of the Little Mermaid takes you to another world with its illustrations, and it's going to be something for me to save up for. I'm going to make room for it on my shelf!

Type Books - because I didn't get The Little Mermaid

And then there were these adorable pins at the Type Books booth (along with the Little Mermaid), so because I didn't get The Little Mermaid, I got myself these two instead. There were a bunch of different designs - one for Magritte and a Bowie one, among others - but these two broke out of that conventional yellow smiley face shape and stole my heart. Dali's going to a friend, and the ice cream (I've been told it looks like poop though) stays with me.

So much for my 1/Edition haul! I completely forgot about Canzine in my excitement for 1/Edition, unfortunately, but I'm hoping I'll be able to make it to the Book Arts Fair at OCAD on December 10! There's also the Antiquarian Book Fair happening at the AGO this weekend (Nov 4 - 6) apparently, so I might drop by there as well to take a look. There are so many book and print events happening about town these days!