Dobbin Books ~ New York
(Robbin Ami Silverberg)

Robbin Ami Silverberg of Dobbin Books & Paper Mill writes of her collaborative bookworks: "In essence, the creative process, which from our cultural perspective contains at its core individual statement, is transformed by the inclusion and disruption of another's vision. This fascination has brought much of my work into the arena of collaborative discourse. The artist book, as a complex container of information, asserts its sensibility on the artist as an ideal collaborative vehicle."

Book of Seconds: Memory Loss
By Robbin Ami Silverberg
New York: Dobbin Books, 2005. Edition of 15.

14 x 12". 52 pages bound like a notebook. Front board covered in colored paper with abstract design.

This book records memory change [presumably in the artist] over time. Interspersed throughout are small post-it notes (of handmade paper) with short texts that reveal progressive change in memory, specifically having to do with language. The initial two sections examine forgetting names and confusing of word order. The third section asks: If words and language go, what then? Can ideas exist without them?

The post-its have been placed on a series of translucent leaves of hemp paper, which have significant folds and a crisp rattling sound that creates an audible background, a kind of poetry, to the reading.
$1,500

Duster 2
By Robbin Ami Silverberg
New York: Dobbin Books, 2001. Second Edition of 42.

30 x 2 x 2". Letterpress printed by Peter Kruty Editions on abaca/rag papers. Materials used include wood and waxed flax cord.

Robbin Ami Silverberg: "When I was in Japan in 1998, I found a dusting brush actually made from the pages of a cut up book. In response to this almost confounding choice of disposable materials, I manufactured my own edition of dusters. The text reflects on this astounding use of a book & the philosophical issues [that is, recycling versus censorship] a book-cum-duster can only elicit."
$250

Mourning Prayer
By Robbin Ami Silverberg
2000. Edition of 20.

Printed on Dobbin Mill papers in black & blue ink. The format & design replicates a ticketing booklet common in Central Europe. The translucent pages represent the 186 steps of the Staircase of Death at the World War II concentration camp, Mauthausen in Austria. Each of the pages is divided in three sections and stamped with hand-carved numbers and text. The monotony of the pagination and endless sequence of numbers acts as a mantra and compliment to the "prayer" which is comprised of a series of similar sounding words that remind one of walking noises – step, steep, stomp, stamp, stop, slip, slap, spit.

Robbin Silverberg in "Women of the Book": "At its best, I am a member of the "People of the Book" ... of a long and rich history of learning and thinking. At its worst, I am a descendant of a misogynist patriarchal people ... one that I will repeatedly question and react against. Either way, it is a part of me and who I am. Many of my artist books have been identified as "Jewish" in theme; at the same time, being Jewish is not central to my work ... being human is."
$650

Mourning Prayer II
By Robbin Ami Silverberg
New York: Dobbin Books, 2004. Edition of 20.

3 x 2.5 x 2.5" accordion fold. Made from paper, photos, mica, teak, and ribbon. Inkjet Printed photographs. Dobbin Mill papers. Housed in a tefillin-shaped case.

Robbin Ami Silverberg: "In a tefillin-shaped case, this tiny book is accordion-folded in a step like pattern with printed archive and contemporary photos of the Todes-steige (Mauthausen's Stairs of Death), interspersed with the one hundred eighty six numbers of the steps themselves."
$330

titok (secret in Hungarian)
By Robbin Ami Silverberg et al.
New York: Dobbin Books, 1996-1998. Edition of 5.

12 x 12 x 12" closed. Consists of 27 4" blocks. Housed in a lidded collapsible box.

Twenty artists and writers plus one musician were asked via letter to send, inform, or instruct Silverberg about a secret. As the secretist, she used their responses to create titok—twenty-seven four-inch blocks that form a twelve-inch cube of three layers (nine cubes per layer). Some boxes are fully closed, some have peepholes, and some are open with boxes within. The exterior and interior faces are covered with over 200 images and texts produced by photography, photocopy, photo transfer and drawing. The imaging on the blocks functions like a maze through which the viewer proceeds, exploring the ideas and feelings suggested about secrets. Each block has a hidden material within that makes noise when rattled. Also included is a CD with a 27-part violin piece composed specifically for the viewing of titok.

Silverberg: “There is neither table of contents nor smoking gun to trace the sources of the elements which make up this artist book. Authorship is treated as privileged information in order to focus the readers' attention on the initial outsider relationship of beholder to content.. My role in creating this object is that of a secretist, a dealer in secrets.”

Secret providers (from NYC unless otherwise noted): Beattie & Davidson; Sylvia Benitez; Yvette Biro; Andras Borocz; Agnes Eperjesi, Budapest; Daniel Georges; Frank Gillette, Long Island; Martin Kubaczek (with the help of Suzuki Toru: Thuringer Wald Co. Ltd.& Kashiwabara Mio), Tokyo; Endre Kukorelly, Budapest; Louise Lawler; Jean Louis LeBreux, Perce, Quebec; Jennifer Lytton; Gabriel Martinez, Philadelphia; Warren Niedich; Laura Parnes; Geza Perneczky, Köln; Simcha Shirman, Tel Aviv; Wolfgang Staehle; Paul Stang, Arlington, VA; X-art Foundation.

The book was commissioned for In the Flow: Alternative Authoring Strategies, the final exhibition at the Franklin Furnace Gallery in New York City.
$3,000

Vorkuta Poems
Poems by Sara Karig
Translated by Laszlo Barinszky-Job
Book design by Louise McCagg
1994. Edition of 20.

A powerful bookwork conceived by Louise McCagg, with paper and binding by Robbin Ami Silverberg of Dobbin Mill. Sara Karig was the precinct captain for Budapest's second election district in 1945 and 1947. She was arrested in 1947, two days after the election which gave power to the Communists, for uncovering voting fraud. Imprisoned in Vorkuta, Polar Region, USSR for seven years, she composed poetry which she committed to memory. After more than three years of hard labor, her physical condition much deteriorated, she was moved to the camp library. There she was able to transcribe her poems, as an aid to memory, on the brown wrapping paper used to bind books. But, since punishment for writing was severe, she burned these scraps before the weekly search. In 1954, upon her return to Budapest, she sat for weeks in a darkened room writing down all that she could recall. The six poems selected for this edition are letterpress printed in both Hungarian and English on brown paper which simulates the sheets on which she temporarily recorded her words. The small book, measuring 3.5 inches square, is housed in a cast paper head, a dramatic representation. Exceptional.

One of the books featured in the Binding section of the New York Public Library's exhibit Ninety from the Nineties. "Robbin Ami Silverberg and Louise McCagg collaborated to allow the reader to pull thoughts (literally) from the mind of another in this book-and-sculpture presentation."
$400

Vorkuta Poems Review

Manhattan 05.12.91
By Louise McCagg
1993. Edition of 20.

7.25 x 7.25 x 5.5". The text was translated by Dobbin Books. It is printed on magnesium plates by Peter Kruty Editions. Petri's cast head functions as the cover when the book is closed and as a bookend when it is opened. Robbin Silverberg made the abaca paper, the cotton paper casting, and the binding.

The Hungarian poet Gyorgy Petri wrote this poem immediately after the molding of his face by Louise McCagg on December 5, 1991. McCagg paces the poem by breaking up the short text so that a word is read as each page is turned.
$425

Clew
By Robbin Ami Silverberg
New York / South Africa: Dobbin Mill / Artist Press, 2004. Edition of 14.

8.75 X 13.5 X .75" Letterpress printed by Mark Atwood at Artist Press in South Africa on Dobbin Mill papers, human hair.

Clew looks at the marriage tree in a Hindu temple in Durban, South Africa. The prose, printed in thin lines of red across a translucent paper, crosses over pulp painted commentary on both its front & back. The text considers the ongoing ritual of young women wrapping the tree with silk threads as a prayer for a potential spouse – and in doing so, the book makes connections between text / texture / textile, as it also connects issues of marriage & bondage. The final sentence was printed on a hanging tag that needs to be spun around in order to be read. The first image in the book is an archival inkjet photo of the actual marriage tree; the polymer plate printed image of Silverberg's spouse with arms bound up with silk threads functions as a wrapper that holds the text leaves. Glued-down stripes of human hair create suggested text lines on the final leaf (& colophon) of the book.
$1250

Vloekboek
By John Roome and Robbin Ami Silverberg
1997. Edition of 5.

10 x 13 x 2" boxed. Accordion fold. Bound with black zippers. Housed in a olive cloth-covered box decorated with two woodcuts.

In Robbin's own words, Vloeboek is a perfectly sophomoric collaboration. The book grew out of a series of woodcut images collaboratively produced in Durban, South Africa in March 1997. Upon further inspection, the artists began to play with word puns, focusing on Afrikaans and its obscure richness. So the book became a swear book.
$1200

Dihangara
By Robbin Silverberg and Artist Proof Studio
2001. Johannesburg/New York. Edition of 30.

6.25 x 18 x 9.75". Mixed media & printing on paper on metal clothing hangers; Copper tubing and Dobbin Mill papers.

Dihangara is the second group collaboration that Silverberg organized at Artist Proof Studio. Fourteen artists were invited to collaborate in Johannesburg. Each were asked to design and produce a portion of the edition - consisting of an image or some sort of visual material using a ready made hanger as the structure for their artwork. The starting point was the fairy tale "The Emperors' Clothes" as well as a line from a favorite Carl Sandburg poem (I write what I know on one side of the paper and what I don't know on the other). Both story and text seemed apt metaphors for the transitional nature of the "world of appearances" - of a blend of reflections on what we can know, do know, and want to know.
$1,500