By Gabriel Martins

Left: The BCA Cyclorama during the Boston Art Book Fair, 2023.

November in Boston’s Back Bay calls for warm sweaters, hot coffee and another year of zines, prints and more at the Boston Art Book Fair.

Hosted by the Boston Center for the Arts, the event is a staple of the contemporary art scene. After a long pause due to the pandemic, this is the second year that the BCA has welcomed back local artists to celebrate their work.

Daniel Smelansky, a local artist with his own booth, was presenting his artwork that displayed humor in sexuality. 

“I can put my pen on the paper and see what comes out,” Smelansky said. “Sexuality is often very explicit so I try to see how I can teeter on that line of being comedic and humorous but also dealing with topics that we’re all dealing with but not talking about.”

Smelansky spoke about how putting his artwork in a public space allows him to see people engage with his work.

“It feels really good to get that validation and have people engage with my work and allow me to go out of my personal studio and bubble where it’s just a feedback loop.” Smelansky said. “It’s really good for my own practice.”

Above: Nick Ortoleva and his classmates attending their booth.

Nick Ortoleva, a photo-based artist at MassArt, was attending a booth with his classmates where they presented student work and promoted senior events for fundraising for their photography department.

“We all come from different avenues and have different perspectives on what we’re seeing and what’s inspiring us,”  Ortoleva said. “I feel that it’s really important that we’re able to get that out and show our different angles and perspectives”

Matilda Biscaldi and Shamayan Sullivan from the Praise Shadows Art Gallery said that they were happy to highlight the different artists they represented.

“A lot that we consume and bring to the fair is a lot that we are personally inspired by.” Biscaldi said. “We always had a small art shop area in our gallery so this feels very relevant (to) the very start of the gallery,” said Sullivan.

Aftan Anukriti from Kitaab Kollective, a Boston-based art collective focusing on media literacy, spoke about how their artwork was in response to the current political landscape.

“It’s a very trying political time. We’re seeing a lot of global resistance against the Israeli apartheid and so that’s what we’re dedicating our booth to,” Anukriti said.

Anukriti spoke about how vocalizing politics through art is imperative to her work. “All art is political. In anything and everything you can’t really escape the politics in any way so we directly wanted to show that through our art and show our politics and what we stand for.” 

Jameson Johnson, founder and editor-in-chief of Boston Art Review, opened the print magazine at the fair in 2017. She said they chose to launch at the fair because it was a place where people who appreciated art and books could come together.

“I can say it’s one of my favorite events of the year,” Johnson said. “It’s incredible to be in a room of people who are so dedicated to making physical objects.”

Johnson said that printed material is essential to documenting and archiving a particular cultural moment so it is part of what makes the fair so great.

“We all spend a lot of time engaging with digital materials on our phone and sometimes it can feel like you’re consuming a lot of information and materials but to go around and actually physically engage with objects is a totally different experience,” Johnson said. 

The BCA is currently taking donations to keep the event free and open to the public as they prepare for next year.