I love books. LOVE them. So imagine my delight when I learned that there was an all book-art gallery in Dumbo! I should have known, of course; Brooklyn has everything awesome, so why wouldn’t we have this?

Central Booking is the curatorial vision of Maddy Rosenberg, herself a book artists (among other media). She has filled the gallery’s permanent collection with work from nearly 200 artists, presenting a stunning variety of pieces, which still forms a beautifully unified whole. In addition to the book art, Central Booking has a second gallery with rotating exhibits on arts & sciences, a quarterly magazine, a zine library, events, and an online presence that includes slideshows and statements from all the artists whose work is featured in the gallery.

Update: As of 2013, Central Booking will be moving to a new storefront on the Lower East Side. Sad to lose such a terrific gallery in Brooklyn, but definitely visit them in the city. In the meantime, read my interview with Maddy below.

brooklyn spaces: How did you get involved with book art?
Maddy: I’ve been an artist all my life, a painter, printmaker, and book artist. About twenty years ago I was in a show, and I was asked by the director of the space to curate a show of my own, and I found that I really enjoyed it. To me it’s like making art with found objects, making installations with other people’s work. So I just got into doing curatorial projects more and more, and also I was doing artists’ books more and more. Since there weren’t a lot of book-art exhibitions at that time, I was often asked to do those. So I became known as a book-art curator, even though many of my exhibitions are all media. But for me book art is all-media, it’s very experimental, it can be anything, and made out of anything. That’s the exciting thing for me, the multi-disciplinary nature of it.

brooklyn spaces: Have you always wanted to open a gallery?
Maddy: No, I never had any interest in having a gallery, it just kind of happened. I needed to have my own space, and I wanted all the work to be for sale, so that’s called a gallery. But it’s really my curatorial project, my vision. It’s not a nonprofit, everything here is for sale, because I think that’s really important. The artists need to make a living, and they need to be placed into good collections. It’s very nice to have somebody buy something for their living room, but for the legacy of these artists, they need to be placed with museum collections, with very good personal collections, all of that. As an artist, I try to do for the artists what I want to be done for myself.

brooklyn spaces: How did you find this space?
Maddy: I had made a proposal and was looking around, and then my friend Don, who was down the hall at Safe-T-Gallery, decided that he didn’t want the rest of his lease, and he called me up. It was the beginning of June, and he said, “You can have my space for the rest of the lease if you can open in September.” I said, “Yeah, sure, no problem.” That was totally insane. I was curating for two spaces, so I had about 150 artists I was dealing with all at once. I wanted to have as many artists in the launch as possible, because I knew the launch was when I’d be able to get everyone here to see what it was. And it worked. At the launch there were just hundreds and hundreds of people, everyone was in a good mood, it was a very engaged crowd. It was just what I needed it to be.

brooklyn spaces: What are some particular projects or pieces that you really love?
Maddy: Well, I love everything in here, because it wouldn’t be here otherwise. I’m very selective. I really hate turning away artists who are really good, but there’s only so much I can do. My own fascination is sculptural works, or when somebody comes up with an idea that’s so different, I wish I had thought of it myself. Or anything that’s just beautifully done, exquisitely thought out. I believe in great ideas and great execution. Part of my program is finding artists who have careers, but not high-profile careers, and helping to make them more high profile. They deserve it, they’ve been doing fabulous work, they’re in museum collections, they get exhibitions all over the world, but they still have to scrape to make a living. That’s a shame for this country, a real shame.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Maddy: Just to continue. I was quite amazed at how much I really, really love doing this. I feel like I’ve come into my own, that I’m in a position where I can actually do what I want, and do things for others that I want to do, and work with people I would not have had access to if I didn’t have my own space. I really can’t see myself getting bored with this.

Like this? Read about more art galleries: Concrete Utopia, 950 Hart, See.Me, Ugly Art Room, Wondering Around Wandering, Micro Museum, Invisible Dog

I’ve been hearing about Invisible Dog—a multi-floor interdisciplinary arts center, filled with art studios, galleries, and event space—for a while, and I was really excited when Ian Trask, the center’s first artist-in-residence, invited me out to the opening for the group show Work/Space, to meet with him and see the place.

Named for the toy this repurposed factory used to produce, Invisible Dog was started by Lucien Zayan, who saw the abandoned factory and fell in love with it. “When I saw the building,” he told me, “the idea of creating an art center with studios and event space came to me.” So he met the owner and convinced him to go along with the idea. “And he was crazy enough to follow me!”

Lucien’s main goal is to support emerging artists from all over the world, and he says there’s always a link from one show to the next. “One artist usually inspires me for the next show. They give me an idea that makes me meet other artists.”

Invisible Dog has studio space for thirty artists, a rotating series of exhibits, plenty of events, a theater residency program, and a store full of weird and wonderful things.

Ian Trask

Ian’s art is often interactive, and we sat on one of his pieces while we did our interview.

brooklyn spaces: How did you get involved with Invisible Dog?
Ian: I was part of a group show here run by Recession Art. I met Lucien that weekend, and he liked my art, and he kind of let me start hanging out in the basement. At the time it was filled with decades worth of old factory stuff, like floor-to-ceiling stacks of spools of colored elastic, buckets of belt buckles, all these materials that could generate inspiration for the right people.

brooklyn spaces: You’re the space’s first artist-in-residence, right? Did they make the program just for you?
Ian: Yeah, it hadn’t really been figured out. There were really no terms, except that, if he let me use the found materials, I would make a piece to give back to the space.

brooklyn spaces: What was the experience of being the artist-in-residence like?
Ian: It was incredible, right from the very first day. Lucien and I had been talking about how I might start using the materials in the basement, and then I just came one day and he was like “Here’s a key.” I figured I might as well show that I wanted to be here, so I went down to the basement and started working. I came back upstairs after a while, and there was a girl giving a cello performance, which was great. I went back downstairs for an hour, came back up, and there was a bar set up and people partying. Every time I came up there was something else going on. I was like, “How’s this even happening? What is this place?”

brooklyn spaces: Do you have a particular fond memory from your experience here?
Ian: The people have been a lot of fun. I’ve had access to a wealth of information. And the exposure the residency has offered me is amazing. I met a guy this weekend who runs a group called Figment, and he said he could get me into that show. Plus I’ve done fun things, like Lucien asked me to create something for a kids’ art fair, which was run by the bilingual elementary school down the street. They wanted to have art-making sessions where the kids could go home with a project, so I made pieces for them to make small caterpillars out of cardboard, yarn, and shredded paper. It was pretty fun.

brooklyn spaces: Has the residency given you the opportunity to explore your art in new ways?
Ian: Oh yeah. This piece we’re sitting on, it’s the first time I’ve done anything interactive with cardboard, and I got a really great response.

brooklyn spaces: Did people sit and stomp on the art?
Ian: All day long. I have pictures of people of every age stomping on it, lying on it, little kids were running and jumping on it. I had originally wanted to create the piece standing upright, and at like midnight two days ago, I tried to stand it up and it all just exploded. I had to do it all over. And as kind of a second option I decided to let people walk on it, and it turned out to be a much better idea. So, you know, small discoveries like that. It was just a really nice fellowship. Plus I’ve developed a really nice friendship with Lucien. He continues to push me, tries to get me involved in other projects. So obviously it’s gone beyond just my twelve-month term. It’s propelled me along my artistic journey.

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Like this? Read about more galleries: Concrete Utopia, See.Me, Central Booking, 950 Hart, Wondering Around Wandering, Ugly Art Room