April 24, 2007 - June 16, 2007
Central Library, 2nd floor Balcony Cases (branch info)

click images to enlarge

Women's Work by Robbin Ami Silverberg

Although the basis for my work—whether artist book or installation—is conceptual, much stems from an essential materiality. It reflects on this as much as its core content and issues. Paper has been my preferred material for more than 25 years and I have explored its potential as a non-neutral substrate in my image making, object making and process.

All of my artist books have handmade paper, meaning it is often watermarked, pulp painted, cut or layered to create a range of artistic and conceptual effects. Upon this material, I work in drawing, computer printed image and text, photography, letterpress, and mixed media collage, just to name a few.

The work in this exhibition addresses "women's work." Three cases display a series of artist books that suggest the three stages of a woman's life. The other cases contain installations of book objects that utilize multicultural proverbs about women, depicting a prevailing misogyny that is funny as it is painful.

Robbin Ami Silverberg studied sculpture at Princeton University, sculpture and photography at the Boston Museum School, and had an apprenticeship in book binding and restoration in Vienna. Her artwork is in numerous public collections, including Yale University, Brooklyn Museum of Art Library, the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, Cleveland Institute of Art and the Technikon Natal Art Gallery in South Africa. She received the 1995 New York Foundation for the Arts award for artist books and a prize in Korea at the 2005 International Artist Book Fair. She is the director of Dobbin Mill, a hand papermaking mill, and Dobbin Books, a collaborative artist book studio, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

To contact the artist: dobbinmill@earthlink.net