In September 2007, I fell in love with art books. I was an intern at Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis — a nonprofit gallery known for out-there presentations — when German art publisher and designer Christoph Keller filled the gallery with obscure art books from all over the world.
These were not museums’ glossy coffee-table tomes with authoritative essays by venerable art historians; instead, there was everything from weird little photocopied zines to intensively designed compendiums of mysterious photos with few words. Any text was just as likely to be in Icelandic or Catalan or Taiwanese as English, not always including an author and rarely an ISBN. After that show, Midway opened a library of such books, and I got the delightfully impossible job of cataloging them.
Today, there is a quiet global industry of artists, galleries and independent publishers making these kinds of volumes. Outside of libraries such as Midway’s and specialty stores such as Printed Matter in New York City, the best places to find them are at annual art book fairs in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Paris — and now Burlington. This weekend, Karma Bird House on Maple Street hosts the first-ever Vermont Art Book Fair.
The free event is the brainchild of Montpelier artist Micah Wood, 38, and Laura Borys, 35, also of Montpelier, who is currently earning her master’s in library science. Borys grew up in Shelburne and recently returned to Vermont from New York City. Wood moved to the state in 2023 to teach studio art at the University of Vermont and, he said in an interview, “shepherd in” the school’s recently acquired risograph machine — a kind of Japanese photocopier popular with zine makers.
Wood said he has long been attending art book fairs across the country and thought it’d be cool to create something similar locally. “There’s an incredible printed-matter art scene in Vermont [and] also in New England,” he said. If he could get as many people from it together over one weekend, he reasoned, we could “see how impactful this scene is, and how widespread.”
Wood floated the notion to Borys — their kids share a preschool — and her husband, Brazilian designer and animator Pedro Piccinini, and together they brought their idea to Michael Jager and Giovanna Di Paola Jager, who co-own Karma Bird House and have been a creative force in Burlington for decades. They were enthusiastic about hosting the event at the building, Borys said.
The team then connected with Charlotte artist-musician Zach Pollakoff; Burlington designer Shawn Dumont, who runs the Shelter Cultivation Project art bookstore at Karma Bird House; and photographer Corey Riddell, who lives in Burlington and codirects Extra Special With Cheese gallery at the Soda Plant.
“We have all taken on different tasks,” Borys said, “and all of a sudden we have 30 exhibitors and a whole lineup of speakers and ideas for different installations.”
True to the spirit of independent art publishing, the group has no sponsors, no formal nonprofit status and no real budget, but the two-day event is neatly organized and creatively envisioned. Instead of a trade fair-style hall of vendors, exhibitors from Vermont, New England and New York will set up on two levels of the mazelike historic warehouse. Demos will be in the gallery and talks, performances and workshops will take place in its downstairs conference spaces.
The fair kicks off with a Friday-evening opening party, organizers said, with exhibitors and a live performance from the Vermont Synthesizer Society. Pollakoff has booked an impressive lineup of local music throughout the weekend, including DJ Gabe Chang, Willverine, Amelia Devoid, St. Silva and DJ Liv.
Saturday’s slate of speakers includes book artists Tricia Treacy, who teaches at Dartmouth College, and Jane Kent, who teaches at UVM and is copresenting with Wood. Furniture maker François Chambard of UM Project, who lives in Shoreham, will talk about the mobile printing presses he designed for Iskra Print Collective. Those will be available to try in workshops that Iskra will run out of its studios on the building’s lower level with guest artist Nathaniel Russell. The Indiana illustrator gave his artist talk in conjunction with the fair on Tuesday, April 7, at Champlain College. Other workshops include one on accordion book making with Norwich artist Maggie Minor and one by Rochester, N.Y., designer Evan Bobrow that asks participants “If you were a puppet, what kind would you be?”
The event’s main focus will be the books exhibitors bring. Some are available for purchase, others for browsing. There’s even a “zine potluck” room where visitors can hang out and peruse anything contributed. One will be unique to every participant: Instead of a standard program for the event, exhibitors will each bring a page visitors can collect and bind into a book to take home with them.
Riddell and Mookie Kristensen, who run Extra Special With Cheese, will be at the fair with their zines, as well as books they’ve sourced from small producers nationally and internationally. They started selling those in January, Kristensen said, because “we love the exploration — and being able to engage with small publishers is a really fun process for us.”
The publications they’re bringing to the fair range from $10 for zines to about $70 for a photo book. Throughout the month, the couple are inviting visitors to stop by their gallery to see other art books from their personal collection.
One is a clever, tiny book disguised as a pack of Chinese cigarettes, with photos of people smoking and the title “Until Death Do Us Part.” Another presents images of mushrooms in Norway’s boreal forests; another, a story in French, printed in bright yellow, about eating an egg. Many of these books involve the reader’s tactile experience, with velvety or translucent pages, fold-out spreads, and origami-like structures.
The fair’s organizers said they have no idea how many people to expect, but they hope Vermonters will discover the joy of these sorts of publications, maybe for the first time. Another goal, Borys said, is to put people in conversation with each other.
“Sometimes when you go to the big art book fairs, it can be a little intimidating. We don’t want it to feel like that — we want it to feel very approachable,” she said. “Our motto this time has been just ‘Say yes to everybody,’ and then see what emerges.”
This article appears in April 8 • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
