Vince Skelly, Book Stools
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Marta Exhibitions Marta Editions Bookshop Mezzanine Available Works
Contact & Details
Vince Skelly, Book Stools Ryan Belli, Of Two Minds George Sherman at Post–Fair Isabel Rower, Imago Minjae Kim and Dominik Tarabański at FOG Various Artists, From the Upper Valley in the Foothills
Chase Biado, Antonia Pinter, Elf Houses MOS, A Garden of... Doug McCollough, In the Style of... Lily Clark, Slip Condition A History of Frogs at NADA Minjae Kim, Phantom–22 Serban Ionescu, The Great Outdoors Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Oríkì (Act III) George Sherman, Embers Kristen Wentrcek & Andrew Zebulon, Quaternion
Lindsey Muscato & Joshua Friedman, Treehugger Henry Kim, Terra Firma Bernhard Hausegger, Doppelgänger Various Artists, Objects for a Heavenly Cave Klas Ernflo and Marc Morro, Árboles Isabel Rower, Box Works Various Artists, Design Miami L.A. Myoung-Ae Lee and Isabel Rower at NADA Various Artists, Rites of Spring Bennet Schlesinger, In Tune With Itself Michael Bennett, We Gotta Get Back to the Crib George Sherman, On Fire
Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Oríkì (Act II) Kristen Wentrcek & Andrew Zebulon, No Life Ben Sanders, New Caps The North American Pavilion Various Artists, Make–Do Sarah Burns, Prairie’s Edge Jonah Takagi, Brut Vessels L.A. Door, Open & Close Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Oríkì (Act I)
A History of Frogs, Elf House Various Artists, Reading Room Ross Hansen, Tino’s White Horses STOOLS from the JF Chen Collection Roula Partheniou, Two and Two Together Marta at Frieze Los Angeles George Sherman, FOX, BOBCAT, BEAR
Marta & Stanley’s Holiday Fête Various Artists, Under / Over East Built In at the Neutra VDL House Kristen Wentrcek and Andrew Zebulon, HOG TRAP Minjae Kim, I Was Evening All Afternoon Chouinard Benches, 1921–1972 Peter Harkawik, Pool Toys Erik Benjamins et al., For Modern Resting
Various Artists, Under / Over Base 10, Kodama Elvire Bonduelle, New Waves
Klas Ernflo, Anorak Alex Reed, International Ceramics Friendship Park

Works

Vince Skelly
Book Stools
May 07 – 10 2026
L.A. Art Book Fair

Join us in Pasadena for Printed Matter, Inc.’s L.A. Art Book Fair 2026.

L.A. Art Book Fair
May 07 – 10 2026

ArtCenter College of Design
South Campus
950 S. Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91105

Opening
Thursday May 07, 6 – 9PM

Hours
Friday May 08, 11AM – 7PM
Saturday May 09, 11AM – 7PM
Sunday May 10, 11AM – 6PM

Get LAABF tickets here.

Paper & Timber

Marta is delighted to announce and present Book Stools, a temporal exhibition of new functional sculptures by Claremont-based artist and designer Vince Skelly. The gallery’s inaugural presence at the L.A. Art Book Fair as non-booksellers, the presentation occupies the courtyard outside ArtCenter’s Mullin Transportation Design Center, a former supersonic wind tunnel, drawing together a constellation of hand-shaped stools, the volumes of which house some of the artist’s most treasured and impactful wood-related tomes.

Rendered from fall-offs of California redwood used in Skelly’s wider practice, the stools are borne of minimal intervention from the artist, who has preserved the clipped corners and innate textures of the material while generating new forms. Uniform in size, the stools, when gathered, register as a recognizable set, each with a rectangular aperture where a sole book—or series of periodicals, in the case of MacGuffin, a biannual craft and design magazine—resides. With the dual function of seating and display, each Book Stool holds its single-title library with the reverence of an altar and the security of a fortress—a layered effort of preservation and celebration within the public gathering space of LAABF. From artist-specific publications on the work of Thaddeus Mosley and JB Blunk to the more expansive surveys of American Axes and The Woodbook, the chosen books, transformed into innate elements of the stools, build a dialogue with their surrounding architecture, emphasizing the material capacity of wood and its omnipresence in our lives. Whether timber or paper, it shelters and educates, protects and illuminates, eternally linked to its fundamental nature.

Vince Skelly
(b. 1987)

Vince Skelly combines process, collective memory, and material to create wooden sculptures that explore the space between sculptural form and functional object. Using wood from a variety of trees from the Pacific Northwest and Southern California, Skelly works reductively to shape each stool, chair, or abstraction from a single block. Skelly’s works are inspired by various traditions of wood carving, both ancient and modern. With a chainsaw and traditional hand tools, Skelly slowly reveals biomorphic volumes, unlikely angles, and carved portals within his glyph-like forms, each bearing their own spirit, rhythm, and personality. Skelly holds a degree from San Francisco State University. His work has recently been exhibited at Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA; the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at WSU, Pullman, WA; and Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA. Skelly has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Adams & Ollman, Portland, OR; and at TIWA Select, New York, NY. In January of 2026, alongside Marta’s directors, the artist co-curated the celebrated group exhibition From the Upper Valley in the Foothills. Book Stools is Skelly’s first solo presentation with the gallery, and acts as a preamble for an offsite solo exhibition of the artist’s wood and bronze sculptures at Antica Terra, Amity, OR from July 18 – August 31 2026.

Marta

Marta is a Los Angeles-based, globally-engaged art gallery. Founded in 2019, the gallery makes space for artists to experiment with the utility of design, and for designers to explore the abandonment of function. Marta’s curatorial, publication, and podcast programs take interest in the process of a work’s creation as well the narrative of its creator(s). Marta embraces the intersection of and the transition between disciplines, advocates for diversity in design, and promotes broad access to the arts.