Visual Art

Miami Artists’ Book Fair Tropic Bound Speaks Volumes In Its 2nd Edition

Written By Douglas Markowitz
January 31, 2025 at 3:54 PM

Austin, Texas-based publisher Herringbone Bindery will be one of the exhibitors at Tropic Bound 2025.  This year’s artists’ book fair is Thursday, Feb. 6 through Sunday, Feb. 9 in the Miami Design District. (Photo courtesy of Tropic Bound)

Two years ago, a very different kind of art fair debuted in Miami. Tropic Bound, founded by a trio of women in the city’s art scene, is dedicated to a growing niche in the wider art market: Artists’ books, essentially artworks in book form.

“Artists’ books are a really unique and intimate form of artwork, very different from the art fairs that we love here in Miami,” says Sarah Michelle Rupert, one of the event’s founders and directors, and founding co-director of SPF: Small Press Fair Fort Lauderdale with Ingrid Schindall, one of three founders of Tropic Bound.

Visitors check out the artist’s books at Tropic Bound 2023. The fair will return to Miami Feb. 8 through Feb. 9. (Photo by Monica McGivern)

“Artists’ books are intimate. They are mostly for one-on-one conversations. They’re meant to be held in your hand and cradled and be with one person at a time. Usually, what people will find at an artists’ book fair are contemporary works of art that take the shape of books or are related to book form, and that can look very different depending on the artist who’s making it.”

After launching the fair in 2023, the organizers are preparing for a bigger and better second edition. “Our applicants ballooned,” after the first edition, says Rupert.

For this edition, they’ve expanded taking up two different spaces in the Miami Design District for Tropic Bound, which runs from Thursday, Feb. 6 through Sunday, Feb. 9.

The Addendum at Palm Court is a new addition, which features artist talks, and a symposium on Thursday, Feb. 6, featuring Stephanie Stillo, chief of rare book and special collections at the United States Library of Congress. On Saturday, Feb. 8 and Sunday, Feb. 9, Tropic Bound will host publisher talks on the rooftop event space. There will also for tours of local printers and other area institutions.

Ninety exhibitors across two sections will show at the fair, supporting over 500 artists from more than a dozen countries — Germany, Spain, Ireland Turkey, Iran, and Singapore. Others are coming from neighboring Latin American countries such as Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia. And plenty of local Miami printers, book artists, and literary organizations will be at the fair, including Books & Books, [NAME] Publications, Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), Bookleggers, EXILE Projects, and the poetry festival O, Miami.

A book by Mexico City-based publisher Anémona Editores, one of the exhibitors at Tropic Bound 2025. (Photo courtesy of Tropic Bound)

“I think the team has done a phenomenal job at curating and cultivating creators,” says Melanie Santiago Cummings, executive director of O, Miami. “My experience at the last Tropic Bound was as an attendee, and it was so impressive and really inspiring to see the wide range of representation. And it really appeals to us as O, Miami because we’re constantly trying to empower all points of view, all voices, all residents in our community.”

O, Miami will have a table at the festival’s new Addendum section, designed to highlight independent publishers of photo books, magazines, and more conventional artbooks. They’re bringing recent publications such as “Ventanitas,” a tribute to Miami’s coffee culture, and a children’s book, “The ABCs of Miami,” illustrated by local artist Melissa Gutierrez, aka Westofchester.

The majority of exhibitors, however, will offer more handmade and bespoke artists’ books that can take a myriad of forms. Mob of Two, a publisher based in the small town of Sebastopol, Calif., north of San Francisco, often experiments with materials in their work. One book they plan to debut at Tropic Bound, featuring images by photographer Eric Castro of gang members getting their tattoos removed, is made of duct tape.

Tropic Bound’s founders, from left: Ingrid Schindall, Cristina Favretto, and Sarah Michelle Rupert. (Photo by Johnny Zhang)

“It’s really great to see in person, because it feels really unique, almost kind of rubbery,” says Sarah Press, co-founder of Mob of Two along with Tiana Krahn, whose company publishes small edition artists’ book collaborations. “He kind of just figured out how to make a book out of duct tape in his garage one day a few years ago, and we thought it was so cool that we helped him make an edition of it.”

Press and Krahn attended the first Tropic Bound separately under their own personal publication imprints, respectively Deeply Game and Spell & Bind Press. Neither had ever been to Miami before, but they found the fair to be a positive experience.

“I didn’t know what to expect, I thought it was going to be like fake boobs and gangsters,” says Krahn half-jokingly. “But the people were just so warm and joyful-seeming, and it just felt really lighthearted. And the people at the fair were a much younger crowd than what we’re used to seeing.”

That accessibility – and tangibility – is something the organizers want to emphasize. “When you go to a museum or even an art fair, you’re usually not encouraged to touch the painting, to grab the photograph, even,” says Cristina Favretto, another co-founder and co-director who also works as Head of Special Collections in the University of Miami Library system. “With artist books…they’re meant to be read and looked at and touched, so it’s intimate, in that sense. They’re also works of art – sometimes they’re unique, sometimes they’re in small editions, so there might be five in the whole world, but they’re much more affordable as well. So, they’re truly gaining a lot of traction in the collecting world.”

Go ahead, touch the art. Tropic Bound vendors allow customers to handle their merchandise – just ask first. (Photo by Monica McGivern)

For Schindall, the form also offers an antidote to a world dominated by the ephemerality of high tech.

“The book is really the first piece of mass informational technology, it basically made the Renaissance possible. It made education possible. It made reading possible for anyone in existence,” says Schindall. “You can read something that was written down 2,000 years ago, but you can’t read a 40-year-old floppy disc. (Books are) a type of media that’s been tried and true throughout history. It’s tactile, it lives in your hands. It makes a personal connection with you.”

WHAT: Tropic Bound 2025

 WHERE: Main Fair: Miami Design District Paradise Plaza, 151 NE 41st St., 3rd Floor, Miami; Addendum: Miami Design District Palm Court, 140 NE 39 Street, 3rd Floor, Miami

 WHEN: Main Fair: noon to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday, noon to 4 p.m., Sunday; Addendum: 3 to 8 p.m., Thursday; 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday and Sunday.

 COST: Free to attend the fair; symposium and welcome party tickets cost $15-$20 via eventbrite.com; shuttle tour tickets cost $60 each via eventbrite.com.

 INFORMATION: tropicboundfair.org

 ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.

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