{"id":207124,"date":"2025-09-07T08:03:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T08:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207124\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T08:03:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T08:03:18","slug":"art-on-paper-leaps-off-the-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207124\/","title":{"rendered":"Art on Paper Leaps Off the Page"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I circled around the dozens of booths along the three wide lanes at Art on Paper on Thursday, September 4, one stood out above the rest. On the bare white walls were Moleskine journals, much like the small ones I use, except these were spread open to Nicolas V Sanchez\u2019s ballpoint pen drawings of the many corners of his family members\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n

This year marks Sanchez\u2019s eighth time showing at Manhattan\u2019s Art on Paper, he told me, alongside around 100 exhibitors at Pier 36 through Sunday, September 7.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tNicolas V Sanchez at this booth on Thursday night<\/p>\n

Smiling infectiously in his booth, Sanchez stood among his intimate journal works depicting pastoral and familial scenes from his Midwest-meets-Mexican upbringing, created with a combination of ballpoint pens. Ranging in price from about $3,000 to $6,000, three of Sanchez\u2019s works had already sold during the first hours of the fair before I arrived, including two notebooks containing drawings of horses and one depicting the outside of his aunt\u2019s fridge with forensic detail.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it\u2019s pen, I can\u2019t erase it, so I just have to keep going,\u201d Sanchez said of his process drawing on the 4.5 x 7-inch (~11.4 x 17.8 cm) notebooks. \u201cYou just commit to it at a certain point, and then that\u2019s kind of the beauty of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tNicolas V Sanchez, \u201cRefri de mi Tia Blanca\u201d (2025)
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tNicolas V Sanchez, \u201cFotos de Cortijos\u201d (2025)<\/p>\n

Sanchez\u2019s still life of his aunt\u2019s fridge, \u201cRefri de mi Tia Blanca\u201d (2025), features ruled notebook paper letters from his nephew held up by magnets. The biggest challenge in creating this piece, he said, was the meta task of ensuring that the letter within the notebook appeared to have been written in pencil rather than sketched by pen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Los Angeles-based gallery Arts Unified\u2019s booth featured another writing accessory. Illustrator Adam Greener\u2019s clipboards initially stunned me due to their gargantuan size, but their familiar form encouraged me to take a closer look.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tWorks by Adam Greener, including \u201cChoices XL\u201d (2022), at Arts Unified\u2019s booth.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tAdam Greener, \u201cChoices XL\u201d (2022) at Arts Unified\u2019s booth<\/p>\n

Greener\u2019s $13,500 \u201cChoices XL\u201d (2022) is a giant ruled piece of paper tucked into a giant clipboard on which the sentence \u201cI will start making better choices\u201d is repeatedly written. A gallery staff member told me that Greener\u2019s work draws upon his school years, during which his doodles would land him in detention. Nearby clipboard pages inscribed with comically blown-up \u201cF\u201d grades transported me back to failing out of the Albuquerque Public School gifted program (in writing, by the way) circa 2011.<\/p>\n

At the Lower East Side-based gallery Van Der Plas Gallery\u2019s booth, I found two artists who were excited to talk about their work: Susan Day, who flew in from Canada that morning, and New York City-based artist Jason McLean. Day was selling her \u201cdream-inspired\u201d drawings of air traffic control maps of Canadian airspace.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the stuff that kind of keeps me going,\u201d Day said, describing the fair. \u201cIt puts my work into some context, and I think having other people\u2019s eyes see my work \u2026 is a huge connection for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\tSusan Day at Van Der Plas Gallery\u2019s booth
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tJason McClean at Van Der Plas Gallery\u2019s booth
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\t\tVan Der Plas Gallery\u2019s booth<\/p>\n

Day said her experiences at the New York art fairs bring her much more traffic than she usually receives in Canada. Showing alongside her was McLean, a fellow Canadian, who walked me through \u201cFuture Directions\u201d (2025), a self-portrait that is also a map of New York City.<\/p>\n

Still other kinds of paper media could be found at Art on Paper\u2019s fair within a fair, BOOKsmART, such as mixed-media artist Seth Apter\u2019s stunning display of art books meditating on time and aging. Last year, Apter told me, he sold 12 of the 17 books he brought with him to the meta fair, despite initially doubting the fair audience\u2019s interest in artist books. At his booth this year, his works were priced between $600 and $1800. Typically, he told me, he sells his works online and at institutions where he teaches.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tBOOKsmART hosted small presses and art book creators.<\/p>\n

For my final stop, I went where the money was, like the brain-rotten Gen-Zer I am.<\/p>\n

That is, Philadelphia-based Stacey Lee Webber\u2019s embroidered cash. Working with real uncut sheets of bills from the United States Mint, Webber accessorizes the well-bred, well-read, and well-fed faces on American paper money with tattoos, clown noses, and cigarettes. Webber first took me to her $32,000 embroidered sheet of $2 bills, \u201cTwo Dollar Fire\u201d (2023). She flipped the work over to its backside, on which the scene of the founding fathers signing the Declaration of Independence is set ablaze with flame-colored thread.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tOne of Nina Katchadourian\u2019s paper sculptures, \u201cPlant #53\u201d (2025), was on sale for $18,000 at Pace Gallery\u2019s booth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun to stitch away,\u201d Webber said. \u201cIt\u2019s tearing away at this structure of money we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the fair as a whole, it was to booths showcasing artists like Sanchez, Apter, and Webber, who ingeniously annotated everyday paper objects with their own sense of individuality, that visitors flocked during the first hours. In contrast to their idiosyncratic visions, the more conventional booths \u2014 standard drawings, paintings, and photographs <\/strong>\u2014 felt, well, two-dimensional.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tOpening night buzzed with a steady stream of visitors.\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As I circled around the dozens of booths along the three wide lanes at Art on Paper on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":207125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[113850,87718,113851,648,1032,1033,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-207124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-armory-week","9":"tag-art-fairs","10":"tag-art-on-paper","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-arts-and-design","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115161976562228850","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}