The Fore Edge Fair: An Online Artist Book Sale
Welcome to MCBA’s first annual Fore Edge Fair, where you’ll find a curated selection of artists’ books and zines available for acquisition.
If you're interested in keeping up with acquisition opportunities through our Fore Edge initiative, sign up for the Fore Edge newsletter here.
If placing an online order is not possible for your organization, please send a purchase order to aschiferl@mnbookarts.org and we will hold your items and follow up with an invoice. We request payment within 30 days of receipt.
Featured Artist’s Book
Personal by Erin Moore
Acquired by Ohio University
Yumeng Li & Zongheng Sun
A hand-assembled, inverted dragon-scale artist book that turns diasporic memory into a spatial reading experience. Pages cascade like urban fragments, allowing Chinatown to be read as a folded city where continuity and update coexist.
What We Keep, What Keeps Us: Chinatown, Between Thresholds
Lisa Nebenzahl
3-panel, tri-fold paper hand fan inspired by the functional keepsakes historically given to mourners to keep cool. Often used as advertising opportunities for funeral homes during the 1930s-1950s.
A sophisticated and touching observation of the world through young eyes.
The poem 'The World Curled' was written by Amelia Ahl, age 8 (1998).
The World Curled Fan Project
Casey Gardner
The Avalanche Safety Series follows the story of 1930s mountain climber Stella Wilder as she learns about the world and herself while navigating landscapes of risk in unstable, potentially overwhelming times.
Glaciers and Pilgrims
Carmel Dor
Here borders are reflected, extend into each other, and are locked in an unending spiral – refracting cyclically as though hands mirrored on a clock face. Each page is an opportunity to reconsider how this volatile fusion unfolds.
כור היתוך Kur Hituch
Leekyung Kang
A visual cartography of the unseen, transforming cosmological symbols and ancient spiritual iconography into contemporary explorations of our place in the universe.
Somewhere a house I was never inside is inside of me
Carolyn Yoo
An 8-page risograph zine, with each spread devoted to a moon phase. Follow the moon’s gentle story as she moves through the month, offering a piece of herself to the stars before drawing inward once again.
Phases of the Moon
Rachel Simmons
Like a colorized postcard, this abstraction of a real experience depicts passengers from the Orlova on a zodiac tour of an iceberg bay.
Orlova
Kyung Eun You
Follow a character who wears a smiley face balloon everyday to work at a bakery. Days in the bakery bring childhood memories, pre-balloon face times. After a hard day at the bakery, a cat affectionately reaches out and pops the balloon.
Happy Bakery
Essence Enwere
A celebration of ancestral adornment and the radiant beauty found in resistance, this book-set honors enslaved ancestors, whose bodies carried the weight of labor yet also the shimmer of love and survival.
Shining Revelry
Jill Adler
Inspired by the famous orange squares, these Krafted Singles are made of pigmented handmade cotton paper and are letterpress printed with cheesy musings.
Krafted Singles
Todd Thyberg
3-D sculpted and printed resin pathogen and shell casing binding with inserted ammunition slugs. Comprised of 42-page letterpress printed pages that assemble like a game board.
Pathogenesis
Lana Lambert
Both at once medicine and poison, sisters Datura of North America and Belladonna of Europe share vilification and veneration in human society.
Poison Sisters
Leekyung Kang
The original Medieval Books of Marvels charted worlds unknown to European audiences, often positioning Asia as a site of spectacle. This reinterpretation critically reclaims this form, positioning an Asian artistic perspective at its center.
The Book of Marvels
Luke Mars
Business is Booming! is about climate catastrophe and its relation to contemporary politics. Quotes from activists and scholars, along with original writing, accompany collages exploring the military industrial complex's role in ecological destruction.
Business is Booming!
Heather Doyle-Maier
Examine a complex and layered relationship between women, food, and control. Narratives inside this book relate memories of eating and family and home, while the binding reflects a restrictive reality.
Wild Goose Chase
Hannah Moog
Inspired by a love of contra dance, a troupe of dancers pop out of their dance hall as the book is opened.
A Bridge of Hands
Angelica Ong
This artist book comprises 11 gelatin silver prints. Made in the structure of a waterfall flipbook, it consists of ‘wet-process’ photograms made of seawater as the waves crashed on the shore under the moonlight.
《起伏》sea tiles: dreaming tides, gathering and unraveling
Charlie Andrés
A transnational latine adoptee’s catalogue of the meaning of “home” within a government-occupied America.
Homesick
Moire
Scott Blake
This optical illusion zine comes with an acetate overlay to create dynamic moire patterns.
Essence Enwere
From the spirituals sung by enslaved Africans to the blues born out of the Delta's hardships, and the gospel music that reverberates through church congregations, Mississippi's ecomusicology tells a profound story of resilience, resistance, and creativity in this typeface and manifesto.