MIAMI, Dec. 8, 2006—If we were to offer a “Fairest of the Fairs” award, then, as of this morning, Flow would be the front-runner.

It is a small, invitational fair taking place at the Catalina Hotel and Beach Club, two blocks east of Art Basel Miami Beach, that spreads its focus beyond the two U.S. coastal art capitals of New York and Los Angeles. Its 18 contributors come from at least 15 different states.

I spoke to its producer, Julie Baker, of Julie Baker Fine Art (Nevada City, Calif.), and asked her why she thought that Miami needed yet another fair. “Our fair started as a reaction,” she told me. “Every dealer wants to be in Miami in December, but a lot of ABMB’s processes are very secretive. It’s political, and you don’t understand how to go about it. There are a lot of us who are pioneering contemporary art in small towns, but we’re not recognized by the bigger fairs because our address doesn’t indicate immediate credibility. We wanted geographical spread, and of course, really great art.”

Among the exhibitors is M% Gallery (Columbus, Ohio), run by the fair’s executive producer, Matthew Garson. And Baker's own gallery is represented well in the fair. She has some exquisite little dried orange-peel sculptures of shoes and handbags by Lucrecia Troncoso from the 2006 series One Size Fits All for only $250.

At the booth for Wildwood Press, a Saint Louis-based print publisher run by Maryanne Ellison Simmons, I was particularly taken with a Michael Berkhemer large-scale angular abstraction. Simmons has a huge etching press in Missouri that allows her artists to make some truly enormous and striking prints.

At other fairs in the past, I’ve always been impressed by Marcia Wood Gallery (Atlanta), and they didn’t fail to perform once again here. They seem to specialize in the whimsical and the witty, and at Flow they have some wonderful pieces by Devorah Sperber (look out for her inverted Mona Lisa) and Peter Bahouth (who makes stereoscopic transparencies in editions of 10 for $1,200—or $1,600 with specially designed, and very cool, viewing stands).

The gallery is also showing artist Mary Engel, whose bizarre mixed-media animal sculptures are among the most entertaining things I've seen all week. She has a pink poodle available for $13,000, but the accompanying horse already went for $15,000.

New York galleries JG Contemporary and Morgan Lehman are also in attendance at Flow. JG Contemporary has Nancy Lorenz’s gorgeous pictures in mother-of-pearl, pigment and shellac, while Morgan Lehman’s selection includes one of the cheapest works in the whole of Miami: Cynthia Atwood’s open-edition PRISONER OF ART embroidered patch, at a wallet-friendly $5.

“The other thing that was important to us,” said Julie Baker, “was nice art dealers. The criteria that we had when we invited people were that we had to like them, they had to be nice people, they had to greet people as they walk in the room.” Something that, I must say, is strikingly lacking in some of the posher ABMB galleries.

“That might sound silly,” Baker added, “but it’s a collegial feel that we have. There’s competition between us but it’s almost like we’re siblings. We’re happy for each other. We’re interested in talent not trends. At Flow there’s real quality, and the buzz that we’re getting from people as they’re going through is, ‘This is a great fair!’”