Sam Erenberg ~ California

The Alphabet Book
By Sam Erenberg
Los Angeles: Sam Erenberg, 1990. One-of-a-Kind.

11 x 8.5"; 27 leaves. Gouache on collaged newsprint. Housed in custom-made clamshell box laminated with Xeroxed vellum.

Sam Erenberg: "I made three hand-made, one-of-a-kind books from the material my late father, Arthur Erenberg, collected for his own professional career; he wrote the captions for the quasi-political newspaper cartoon, Grin and Bear It. The strip appeared in the Los Angeles times for many decades, as well as other newspapers across the country.

"This material consists of his collages of old published jokes, as well as ones he wrote himself. On two books, The Alphabet Book and Words from L.A., I used gouache to paint the letters and words. The third book is made with other newspaper photographs and was a collaboration between Elena Siff and me."
$950

The Spirit Tower
By Sam Erenberg
San Francisco: Sam Erenberg, 1989. Edition of 30.

8 x 8" closed; 8 x 192" extended; 24 pages. Accordion fold letterpress printed on handmade Japanese Moriki paper. Screens printed by Philip Insalaco at Santa Barbara. Text handset by M & H Type, San Francisco. Text and plates printed on a Vandercook Proof Press by Julie Holcomb Printers, San Francisco. Binding and portfolios by Klaus Rotzscher, San Francisco. Wrappers printed with four relief prints in gold from photoengraved plates. Enclosed in an archival gray board . Signed and numbered by the artist.

Sam Erenberg: "This hand-made letterpress book combines gold and black text with screened HM Moriki papers from Japan, creating unusual colors and textures. The text, poem no. 242 from The Confucian Odes, translated by Ezra Pound, alludes to King Wen’s magical tower, built in a holy place surrounded by water during the Chou dynasty in China. The scroll-like pages are 8 inches high and unfold, like the song itself, to a length of 192 inches."
$600

The Killing of Nettie Love
By Sam Erenberg
Santa Barbara, California: Mudhorn Press, 1983. Edition of 100.

5 x 6.5"; 34 pages. Signed & numbered by the author. Letterpress printed using handset Univers on Ingres Antique text. With photoengraved prints. Handbound into Canson Mi-Teintes covers by Judyl Mudfoot at Mudborn Press. Issued in glassine envelope. Sewn fold binding in black paper cover.

Understated testimony about the collateral damage that attends violence.

Sam Erenberg lived in a loft in downtown Los Angeles in 1965. That August of that year, The Watts Insurrection erupted and a curfew zone, initiated by the California National Guard and the LAPD, included the corner where Erenberg lived. The story of Nettie Love was told to the artist's mother, Adele Erenberg, by Nettie's husband, Claude Love.
$200