2025 Novel Ideas Art Book Fair
April 4–5, 2025
Fair dates and times
Friday, April 4, 2025, 6pm-9pm
Saturday, April 5, 2025, 12pm-4pm
Free Admission
Contemporary at Blue Star is pleased to announce the return of the Novel Ideas Art Book Fair. Established in 2020 Novel Ideas is aimed at highlighting and connecting the amazing artists in our region and beyond who utilize books and print based materials as their medium and share their work. Also included are publishers and presses producing artists’ books, monographs and related publications. Novel Ideas features artists’ books, monographs, zines, printed ephemera, and more.
The fair will happen in the Contemporary’s Education Space, right next-door to our exhibition galleries.
Image Gallery
Feral Editions at the 2024 Novel Ideas Art Book Fair. Photo by Francisco Cortes.
Aztlan Libre Press is an independent press based out of Yanaguana/San Antonio, Texas that is dedicated to the publication, promotion and free expression of Native American Indian/Xicanx literature and art.
Baby Gibo is a moniker of Gabriel Garcia (He, Him) an interdisciplinary artist and curator based out of NW Indiana. Gabe self publishes comics and zines centered around narratives based on family stories and the Latinx experience in South Texas and the Midwest. He is also one half of Too Rad Comics, a curatorial collaborative focused on exhibiting self-published and small press comics.
Mujerista Magic Publications is a grassroots project created by Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez. Our mission is to educate mujercitas through art and community building. We embrace self-healing through spiritual and ancestral practices to guide you in finding your own creative and healing voice. They will be introducing a new Mexika Calendar.
Gabi will be showcasing her book, “Dear Frank, Love, Gabi.” Friday only.
This isn’t just a story of heartbreak—it’s a journey of reclamation. Gabi learns to stand in her power through grief, love, and self-discovery. She unpacks the pain of loss, the beauty of healing, and the strength of rebuilding with raw honesty. A love letter to those who’ve begged for intimacy, lost themselves, and found their way back—this book is for the broken, the healed, and the still healing.
*Saturday April 5th at 1PM find Gabi at the Russell Hill Rogers Gallery at UTSA Southwest giving a talk for the release of the book, in proximity to her work in view in “The Inbetweenness” curated by Marisa Sage for the CAM Perennial exhibition.
M12 is a group of award-winning artists, researchers, and writers collectively based in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain West. Primarily known for art projects that explore public space, rural cultures and landscapes. M12 creates artworks, research projects, and education initiatives centered around context and place. Speaking to the complexities of rural places, the studio blends multiple fields, allowing research, fieldwork, design and site-specific sculpture to merge. We will be featuring LANDLINES, the culmination of our LANDLINES Initiative, a multi-year engagement with Colorado’s rural San Luis Valley between 2018–2022.
Nicole Geary creates zines, artist books, and hand-pulled prints including relief, intaglio, and letterpress. Her work deals with concept of human memory, often using geology and the methodology of science to look at the interior world of the body and mind.
Analysa Castellano, owner of FLOWER Art & Design, is a local fine artist, caricaturist, and crafter. Located inside of Wonderland of the Americas, her pop-up shop carries her original oil paintings, handmade stickers, silkscreened t-shirts, and more. Analysa is excited to bring a small taste of what her store has to offer to the attendees of this exciting event.
Andrea V Rivas is an artists and maker of zines, prints, stickers, and more. As a first generation latina, her zines cover stories from Honduras folklore, influenced by my Latinx culture and a strong desire for belonging. Her work often depicts the memories and dreams of seeing her family in Honduras. Follow @ArtfullyAndrea.
Celeste De Luna is an independent artist and printmaker using traditional printmaking techniques with contemporary themes on nature, borders, and spirits. Visit her to explore hand-pulled prints, mixed media artwork, and other bespoke pieces inspired by her artistic journey.
Bill Baird & Family create chapbooks, zines, small run vinyl albums, cassettes. Basil Baird will be sharing her first published chapbook.
Bill Baird is a writer, musician, and composer who’s lived in San Antonio, Austin, Portland, and Oakland (where he studied book art at Mills College). He came up fully immersed in the DIY scene and has produced over 30 albums and many booklets/zines, for major record labels, magazines, and more. His recent publication is the first collection of his written work.
Robert Craig Bunch is the author of “The Art of Dreams, Visions, Other Worlds: Interviews with Texas Artists” (2024) published by Texas A&M University Press and “The Art of Found Objects: Interviews with Texas Artists” (2016). Both will be available for purchase along with his Blurb-published books of Life Magazine collages, as well as a selection of original collages.
DC PressWorks creates lino-cut and letterpress printed zines along with small hand pulled prints featuring reading as a theme.
Mark Menjívar is an artist and educator whose art practice primarily consists of creating participatory projects while being rooted in photography, oral history, archives, and social action.
Shadowbag Press (Charlie Morris)
Shadowbag Press is owned and operated by local San Antonio artist Charlie Morris. The artist primarily focuses on handmade in-studio small edition books, zines, archival prints, photo-collage, and drawing. Combining analog and digital, Morris creates layered meanings, multiple narratives, and radical juxtapositions in order to illustrate the experience of moving, exploring, and documenting actual lived experience.
Kathleen Trenchard offers art books related to her cut paper art work, cut paper art/papel picado books, and Buddhist burial paper exhibit brochures. She will also be doing a cut paper demo at her table.
No Scrap Left Behind is artist Jill Doyle who believes in collaboration and reuse in the form of useable artist books.
Gary Sweeney is an artist who works in printmaking, photography, sculpture, postcards and more. He often utilizes text and found images as material for satirical humor, reflecting on American culture, place, and personal history. He will be sharing monographs highlighting his career and projects, prints, postcards, and other print ephemera that serves as source material and inspiration in his work.
Mercury Project is a space to create grow and connect. It is a multifunctional creative space housing all forms of art and design. Artists with studios at Mercury Project will offer prints, drawings, photographs and more.
