The Center for Book Arts was pleased to take part November 8th and 9th in this year's Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair and Conference in Silver Springs, MD. This was the 10th edition of the event, which is organized every two years by Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. The bookfair and conference connects book makers, publishers, scholars, collectors and enthusiasts in a two day exchange consisting of a dynamic book fair, exhibitions, discussions and events. As an exhibitor at the fair, the Center brought along new publications, including our exhibition catalogs, chapbooks and artist books, and took the opportunity to spread the word about our activities.

This year the fair featured an upper level featuring new artists in the medium, offering recent grads and new faces a forum for their work. New faces included former CBA student and recent UArts Alum Regan Gradet (Great Danger Press); former CBA volunteer Jessica Peterson and Alabama graduate student (Paper Souvenir) and Elysa Voshell (After Nostalgia Press) CBA's 2006 Stein Scholar.

We were excited to see leafletting alive and well under the auspices of Impractical Labor, a collaboration between Emily Larned and Brigid Elmer, whose aim appears to be the promotion of the conceptual in the handmade.

Conference presenters focused on time, pace and the book. Jana Harper spoke eloquently about the parallels between walking and reading, drawing from the collection of Urban Books at Washington University. Mary Tasillo, proprietor of Cake & Pie Press, examined new forms of the democratic multiple, complementing another new component of this year's event, "Democratic Organization", a display of books made for wide dissemination.

The Center was very pleased to take part in such a dynamic display of the wide variety of activities and projects produced in the name of book art. It seems like the number of conferences and fairs devoted to artist books is increasing exponentially; this was the second fair we had attended (Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair just having passed) in a month. Several institutions brought along promotional materials for events they are planning for 2009. We're looking forward to the next opportunity to gather to see new work and it doesn't seem like we'll have to wait very long.