As I circled across the dozens of cubicles alongside the three extensive lanes at Artwork on Paper on Thursday, September 4, one stood out above the remainder. On the naked white partitions had been Moleskine journals, very like the small ones I take advantage of, besides these had been unfold open to Nicolas V Sanchez’s ballpoint pen drawings of the various corners of his members of the family’ houses.
This yr marks Sanchez’s eighth time displaying at Manhattan’s Artwork on Paper, he informed me, alongside round 100 exhibitors at Pier 36 via Sunday, September 7.
Nicolas V Sanchez at this sales space on Thursday evening
Smiling infectiously in his sales space, Sanchez stood amongst his intimate journal works depicting pastoral and familial scenes from his Midwest-meets-Mexican upbringing, created with a mixture of ballpoint pens. Ranging in worth from about $3,000 to $6,000, three of Sanchez’s works had already offered through the first hours of the honest earlier than I arrived, together with two notebooks containing drawings of horses and one depicting the skin of his aunt’s fridge with forensic element.
“Because it’s pen, I can’t erase it, so I just have to keep going,” Sanchez stated of his course of drawing on the 4.5 x 7-inch (~11.4 x 17.8 cm) notebooks. “You just commit to it at a certain point, and then that’s kind of the beauty of it.”
Nicolas V Sanchez, “Refri de mi Tia Blanca” (2025)
Nicolas V Sanchez, “Fotos de Cortijos” (2025)
Sanchez’s nonetheless lifetime of his aunt’s fridge, “Refri de mi Tia Blanca” (2025), options dominated pocket book paper letters from his nephew held up by magnets. The most important problem in creating this piece, he stated, was the meta process of making certain that the letter throughout the pocket book appeared to have been written in pencil relatively than sketched by pen.
The Los Angeles-based gallery Arts Unified’s sales space featured one other writing accent. Illustrator Adam Greener’s clipboards initially surprised me on account of their gargantuan dimension, however their acquainted type inspired me to take a more in-depth look.
Works by Adam Greener, together with “Choices XL” (2022), at Arts Unified’s sales space.
Adam Greener, “Choices XL” (2022) at Arts Unified’s sales space
Greener’s $13,500 “Choices XL” (2022) is a huge dominated piece of paper tucked into a large clipboard on which the sentence “I will start making better choices” is repeatedly written. A gallery employees member informed me that Greener’s work attracts upon his faculty years, throughout which his doodles would land him in detention. Close by clipboard pages inscribed with comically blown-up “F” grades transported me again to failing out of the Albuquerque Public Faculty gifted program (in writing, by the way in which) circa 2011.
On the Decrease East Aspect-based gallery Van Der Plas Gallery’s sales space, I discovered two artists who had been excited to speak about their work: Susan Day, who flew in from Canada that morning, and New York Metropolis-based artist Jason McLean. Day was promoting her “dream-inspired” drawings of air visitors management maps of Canadian airspace.
“This is the stuff that kind of keeps me going,” Day stated, describing the honest. “It puts my work into some context, and I think having other people’s eyes see my work … is a huge connection for me.”
Susan Day at Van Der Plas Gallery’s sales space
Jason McClean at Van Der Plas Gallery’s sales space
Van Der Plas Gallery’s sales space
Day stated her experiences on the New York artwork gala’s carry her way more visitors than she often receives in Canada. Displaying alongside her was McLean, a fellow Canadian, who walked me via “Future Directions” (2025), a self-portrait that can also be a map of New York Metropolis.
Nonetheless different kinds of paper media could possibly be discovered at Artwork on Paper’s honest inside a good, BOOKsmART, reminiscent of mixed-media artist Seth Apter’s beautiful show of artwork books meditating on time and getting old. Final yr, Apter informed me, he offered 12 of the 17 books he introduced with him to the meta honest, regardless of initially doubting the honest viewers’s curiosity in artist books. At his sales space this yr, his works had been priced between $600 and $1800. Sometimes, he informed me, he sells his works on-line and at establishments the place he teaches.
BOOKsmART hosted small presses and artwork ebook creators.
For my last cease, I went the place the cash was, just like the brain-rotten Gen-Zer I’m.
That’s, Philadelphia-based Stacey Lee Webber’s embroidered money. Working with actual uncut sheets of payments from america Mint, Webber accessorizes the well-bred, well-read, and well-fed faces on American paper cash with tattoos, clown noses, and cigarettes. Webber first took me to her $32,000 embroidered sheet of $2 payments, “Two Dollar Fire” (2023). She flipped the work over to its bottom, on which the scene of the founding fathers signing the Declaration of Independence is ready ablaze with flame-colored thread.
One among Nina Katchadourian’s paper sculptures, “Plant #53” (2025), was on sale for $18,000 at Tempo Gallery’s sales space.
“It’s fun to stitch away,” Webber stated. “It’s tearing away at this structure of money we have.”
On the honest as a complete, it was to cubicles showcasing artists like Sanchez, Apter, and Webber, who ingeniously annotated on a regular basis paper objects with their very own sense of individuality, that guests flocked through the first hours. In distinction to their idiosyncratic visions, the extra typical cubicles — commonplace drawings, work, and pictures — felt, nicely, two-dimensional.
Opening evening buzzed with a gradual stream of holiday makers.
