Can I borrow some money?

Mmmmm, lots of yummy art to buy at the AAF Contemporary Art Fair (which makes it the Affordable Art Fair Contemporary Art Fair?) I don't frequent this events, but they are becoming a little hard to avoid, and an inherent part of looking at art. I enjoyed being able to see works from a variety of regions (nyc, sf, la, new orleans, portland, kansas city, montreal, toronto, etc.) all under one roof (albeit a bit cavernous).
I attended thanks to the generosity of our friends at Hang, who brought a huge diverse display of works to fill their large booth. They included such works as Yvette Molina's beautiful and spare works on metal, and Jeff Loehman's sensual burned paper works. I really wanted to take home the entire PDX booth, the highlight of which was Ellen George's acrylic resin tidbits, small organic pieces of happiness, which resonated with whimsy. I also always love Bean Finneran's spiky and colorful accumulations of ceramic pieces into geometric forms.
I also drooled just a little over the ceramic fungal pieces by Joy Hought at Lola Gallery, and the Doug Moulden layers of acrylic to create deep green and blue images of trees and roots, that the Ch'i people shared with me. Annie Chung's sand paper pieces were much smaller and more intimate than I expected (at Steven Wolf), and Allie Rex's paper cutouts and Laura Sharp Wilson's fantastical plants were pleasant surprises at Byron C Cohen Gallery.
The best part of the fair was that everyone was really really friendly, and willing to talk about the work and show more work. It certainly makes it easy to be interested in buying...
Most of the research that I had done prior to attending proved itself out at the fair, there were relatively few surprises, and a lot of fun and beautiful work. Of course, given the venue you aren't really going to see much that is challenging or different. I do hope that there isn't too much of a turn towards the fairs as the seminal art venue, I think we would lose a tremendous amount of risk and experimentation which occurs in the gallery venue.
Having said that, there is a strong need to "take back" the art world, so after I get this show installed, I will start working to put together a Budget Gallery for NYC!