BU School of Visual Arts Partners with Boston Center for the Arts for 2025 Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair
Coming to BU March 20-22, Multiple Fairs brings together artists, designers, publishers, and art book enthusiasts to celebrate the dynamic intersection of art, design, and publishing
Design by Kate Ragosta (CFA’25), BFA Graphic Design.
BU School of Visual Arts Partners with Boston Center for the Arts for 2025 Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair
Coming to Boston University March 20-22, 2025, Multiple Fairs brings together artists, designers, publishers, and art book enthusiasts to celebrate the dynamic intersection of art, design, and publishing.
Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts and Multiple Formats are teaming up with the Boston Center for the Arts’ Boston Art Book Fair for a co-produced Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair, happening March 20–22, 2025, at Boston University’s Fuller Building on the Charles River Campus.
Launched in 2022, Multiple Formats, organized by Christopher Sleboda, Associate Professor of Art, Graphic Design; Chair, BFA Graphic Design, and the BU Graphic Design MFA and BFA programs, serves as an inclusive forum for artist book publishing, fostering creative networks and community.
This year’s collaboration allows Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) and Boston University School of Visual Arts (SVA) to expand their shared mission of connecting art, books, and community—bringing together artists, designers, publishers, and art book enthusiasts to celebrate and explore the dynamic intersection of art and publishing.
I’m thrilled that this year Multiple Formats is collaborating with the Boston Center for the Arts. I attended the Boston Art Book Fair as an exhibitor before my appointment at BU and I know first-hand what a phenomenal event it is—spotlighting local and regional artist book publishers while also attracting artists and designers from across the US and the world. The Boston Art Book Fair has been an incubator and supporter for artists and designers working with the form of bound volumes.
Multiple Fairs kicks off with a keynote by designer & cyber-ethnographer Ruby J. Thelot on Thursday, March 20 at 7pm. Thelot is an artist, designer, and cyberethnographer based in New York, and an adjunct professor of Design and Media Theory at NYU. He is the founder of the award-winning creative research and design studio 13101401 inc. He is the author of “A Cyberarchaeology of Checkpoints” (Irrelevant Press, 2024) and “Stonemilker” (Nueoi Press, 2022). His research and artwork which has been shown and presented internationally (The Hague, Berlin, Ljubljana, Abuja, New York City, Montreal, Toronto) focuses on the interactions between humans and artificial intelligence, the metaverse and the implications of being-on-line.
Collaborative events and programming follow the keynote event of Multiple Fairs over the next two days. Friday’s symposium, organized by BU, will feature a series of workshops including Riso printing and machine maintenance, paper engineering, and calligraphy. On Saturday during the art book fair, the BCA will host additional panel discussions and a workshop, broadening the fair’s impact and accessibility. Programs on Saturday highlight local artists and organizers and explore print media as a tool for solidarity, the role of archives in shaping historical narratives through two panels, along with a hands-on communal stitching circle. This programming aligns with both BU SVA and BCA’s commitment to engaging diverse audiences and ensuring that the fair remains a vital space for artistic discourse and community building. BCA’s programs will be held in the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground.
Randi Hopkins and Julia Szejnblum, organizers of the Boston Art Book Fair, say, “Boston Center for the Arts and the Boston Art Book Fair are pleased to partner with BU’s Multiple Formats to offer expanded public programming and new avenues of engagement to Boston’s art and book loving creative communities. Multiple Formats has been an exciting addition to our cultural landscape, and we look forward to joining forces to nurture and inspire bold use of the powerful expressive possibilities of print.”
Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair is free and open to the public. It is sponsored in part by the Wagner Foundation.
Friday, March 21 Symposium
- Riso Workshop • Panayiotis Terzis • Megapress + SVA RisoLab
- Riso Workshop • Alex Luciano
- Paper Engineering Workshop • Kelli Anderson
- Creative Coding Workshop • Halim Lee
- Calligraphy Workshop • Javier Viramontes
- Printing CMYK Photos with Riso • Travis Shaffer
- Riso Maintenance • Robert Baxter
Saturday, March 22 Programming
11:15am – 12pm
We often consume the news alone–reading a newspaper over breakfast, doomscrolling on our phones, or listening on the go. DS4SI’s “Sunday Social News” intervention asks, “What changes when we consume, critique, and even produce news together?” Join us as we prototype a new collective space and ritual for the news.
12 – 1pm
This panel will bring together artists and collectives whose practices engage with print media as a tool for disseminating information, galvanizing action, and promoting solidarity. The conversation will examine how newsprint, pamphlets, magazines, and other print publishing initiatives can be a platform for organizing in the present while also creating an archive for the future. With artists Cierra Michele Peters and Mark Hernandez Motaghy, co-founders of Fortunately Magazine, artist Maggie Wong, and Vin Caponigro (Snake Hair) presenting Unity Newspaper, and Design for Social Interventions (DS4SI). Moderated by Jameson Johnson, Founder & Editor in Chief, Boston Art Review
2 – 3:30pm
We do not consent to division. Instead, we dream into interdependent communities and know that we are stronger when we show up for each other. Join us for a stitch circle in the midst of the book fair–a time to slow down and hand stitch together, as we co-create a large fabric scroll representing our collective vision.
The first half hour of the circle will be more structured and Maggie will offer gentle instruction on a few basic stitches to get us started. From there, participants will be given a fabric patch, needle and thread with which to create a block to keep or to weave into the larger scroll and folks can drop in to make their marks. The piece will be finished and sewn together after the event, and kept in a to-be-determined community space for display.
4 – 5pm
This panel will look at archives and ephemera as they are used by artists and activists: how they are created, how they circulate, and how relationships between art and archives manifest in the world of print and art. We will look at how archives can work to challenge dominant narratives, and at the erasure of archives, and ask questions about who and what are included, and who and what are missing in these compilations. We will look at how artists and other creative practitioners unearth and share lost histories, examine the role of publication in making an archive or an artwork, and look at the role of print in this process.
ABOUT US
Multiple Formats was launched at Boston University in 2022 by Christopher Sleboda, Associate Professor of Art, Graphic Design at Boston University as an elastic and inclusive forum for discussions about artist book publishing with an aim to build community and strengthen creative networks. The 2025 edition of Multiple Formats branded as “Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair” will kick off with a keynote lecture by Rudy J. Thelot, designer and cyber-ethnographer on Thursday, March 20, at 7pm, and Friday’s symposium on March 21 will include workshops, short-form presentations, collaborative teaching and making events. On Saturday, March 22 from 11am to 6pm, exhibitors from all over will showcase their publications, and BCA has organized a full day of programming at the Howard Thurman Center on the Boston University Charles River Campus.
Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts includes graduate and undergraduate programs, with programs of study including Graphic Design, Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Art Education. Two graduate programs — an MFA in Visual Narrative and an MFA in Print Media & Photography — launched in Fall 2022. BU School of Visual Arts is part of the College of Fine Arts, a community of artist-scholars and scholar-artists who are passionate about the fine and performing arts, committed to diversity and inclusion, and determined to improve the lives of others through art. Learn more by visiting bu.edu/cfa/visual-arts/.
Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) is a performing and visual arts complex whose mission is to support working artists to create, perform, and exhibit new work; and connect arts to community. Established in 1970 to serve as a hub for visual and performing arts for the people of Boston, the BCA was founded on the belief that the arts contribute to the economic and social well-being of citizens and neighborhoods. Today, BCA supports over 300 artists annually and provides more than 50 residencies, hosts more than 30 community events, 20 theater productions, 5 visual art exhibitions, and welcomes more than 200,000 visitors to itsSouth End campus. To learn more about Boston Center for the Arts, visit bostonarts.org.
Wagner Foundation is a Cambridge, MA based foundation that invests in health equity, economic prosperity, and cultural transformation across the globe. Wagner Foundation prioritizes work that strengthens equitable systems and views artists as leaders and changemakers who are critical voices in interrogating the past, wrestling with the current moment, and envisioning alternative futures. Learn more at wfound.org.
