Red Trillium Press ~ Massachusetts
(Steven C. Daiber)

Collaborations with Cuban Artists
Cuban based books by Steven Daiber

Postcards
By Steven C. Daiber
Williamsburg, Massachusetts: Red Trillium Press, 2006. Edition of 5.

4.25 x 6.125". 16 postcards. Accordion fold souvenir package. Silkscreen.

Postcards consists of souvenir postcards overprinted with found historical images plus images that appeared in Cuban newspapers in the spring of 2006. Juan Leal printed the historical lithographic images from original stones and Hanoi Perez did the silkscreen printing, which was completed in April 2006 at the Taller Nelson Domingo, Havana, Cuba.
$250

Tobacco
By Steven C. Daiber
2003. Edition of 3

10 x 67" extended, accordion bound. Densely overprinted lithographic images of Cuban tobacco art. Printed from original stones at Taller Experimenta De Grafica, Havana, Cuba.

Steven C. Daiber: "In September 2003 I went to Havana, Cuba for ten months. In Havana I was able to print in three different print shops. First printing at the sate run Taller Experimenta De Grafica where there is an archive of hundreds of lithographic stones containing images used in the Cuban tobacco industry, advertising, North American comics, and even Christmas wrapping paper. In addition there are two smaller state owned Tallers and at least half dozen private workshops."
$200

Click image to enlarge

Poder
By Oscar Osmeivy Ortega, Orlando Montalbán Rodríguez, Jesús Reyes Romeu, Jannette Brossard Duharte, Isolina Limonta Rodríguez, Alejandro Sainz Ramos, Dania Fleites Díaz, Norberto Marrero Pírez, Eduardo Hernández Santos, Angelmaidelín Calzadilla Fernández, Hanoi Pérez Cordero, Darexis Valle Rodriguez, Luis Lamothe Duribe, Steven C. Daiber, Aliosky García Sosa, Yamilys Brito Jorge.
Havana, Cuba: Red Trillium Press, 2010. Edition of 25.

10.125 x 10.125" closed; 20 pages comprised of five 4-paneled accordions (four containing only images; one containing text: introduction, list of artists and prints, colophon). Text in Spanish and English. Laid in four-flap letterfold black and red paper wrapper.

Yamilys Brito Jorge, introduction: "Power rules. …For some Power is skill, for others command or willpower, even persuasion. But for most Power is control either over others or themselves. ...

"By making art and putting together this book we have chosen our way to relate to Power. All prints included illustrate, different aspect of The Relationships of Power in its various dimensions: the power of the mind, willpower, financial, military, economic power, the power of authority, social power, physical or mystical ...

"After all Power is a natural condition."

Poder is the first in a planned trilogy of collaborative projects of Cuban artists and American book artist Steven Daiber.

Steven Daiber, Bonefolder, Volume 7, 2011: "This book arts collaboration is a series: a trilogy based on themes Cuban artists feel describe their social and political relationships.

"The creation of Poder was a collective effort and at times herding cats. The project involved sixteen artists, various institutions, and multiple locations. Finding materials was perhaps the most complicated part of the process. In Cuba there are very few art supply stores; everything comes in by boat around the far-reaching US blockade. It was complicated! The preliminary meetings decided the first theme (Poder), format and size of the book. The two art schools San Alejandro Art Academy and ISA (Institute of Superior Arts) helped provide materials, equipment, and a location for the creation of the book. "
$2,000 (Last Copy)

El Muro: The Wall
By Eduardo Hernández Santos
Williamsburg, Massachusetts: Red Trillium Press, 2008.
Edition of 1200.

9 x 14”; 18 leaves (2 pink free end sheets, 1 pink divider, 10 photograph fold outs, 5 text pages). Ten black and white triptych photographs, two bilingual essays, and a glossary. Printed by duotone offset lithography on Shine, a luminous mica-coated acid-free paper, with three sheets of translucent magenta paper separating the photographs and essays. The essays, by Eduardo Hernández Santos and Abel Sierra Madero (noted Cuban ethnologist), are presented in Spanish and English. Also included is a bi-lingual translation of the lines by poet Virgilio Piñera and the individual letters Hernandez added to the photographs of the wall, which are abbreviations of pejorative terms used in Cuba to refer to homosexuals. Wire-o binding opening to 20" so the triptychs may be viewed in full.

Red Trillium Press: "Eduardo took these photographs in the summer of 2005. Working in the dark of night he printed them on expired photo paper and with exhausted chemistry, in his bedroom-turned-darkroom in Centro Habana. Hernández then adhered lines of poetry by the late Cuban poet and playwright Virgilio Piñera to the photographs of the wall, metaphorically breaking down the mortar that supports the hateful edifice of heteronormativity that confines his subjects to the edge of the city.

"Eduardo Hernández Santos’ El Muro is a composite chronicle of late-night life at Havana’s utmost limit of the city: the seafront wall, popularly known as the Malecón. El Muro is a significant visual source of constantly-thwarted gay nightlife in Havana, but above all it is a social document about the members of a historical underclass emerging from hiding to contest efforts to control their lifestyles, to proclaim their normality and their non-conformity of the status quo. These powerful images express the subjects’ abiding desire to reaffirm their existence.

"Hernández photographs combine the anthropological and the voyeuristic. The series confirms that human sexuality is a continuum of possibilities that encompasses not only the subtle but also the sensational. Each photograph is also a remarkable testimony to human endurance and triumph of the spirit, motivated by humiliation, scorn, derision, homophobia, and intolerance. These are the people Hernández celebrates with his photographs. He presents them not as passive players but as people who struggle (though more quietly than not) to oppose their discrimination even when opposition is a tough choice."
$45 Trade edition
$600 Deluxe edition: comes in a clamshell box and includes a signed copy of El Muro and two pigmented-ink portraits signed on verso.

Almendrones
By Steven C. Daiber
Havana, Cuba: Red Trillium Press, 2006. Edition of 25 plus 2 binder’s copies.

13.75 x 9.5 x 1.875". Two books, one with the prints, one with background information on the project and the artists, housed in a linen clam box. Woodcut, lithography, silkscreen, and intaglio printed at the Taller Nelson Domingo, Taller Experimenta De Graphic, and private tallers in Havana. Copies 16-25 are for each participating artist.

Colophon: "Collaborative project with 10 Cuban printmakers, who each offer one image of the culture of aging American cars that populate their country where recycling of materials is a necessity of life and creative art form.”

Artists: Laura Hidalgo Cabrer (woodcut with handcoloring and presstype), Luis Lamothe Duribe (linoleum), Orlando Montalván (callograph), Julio César Peña Peralta (lithography and linoleum), Yordanis García Delgado (lithography), Jesús Roberto Reyes Romeu (Chucho) (linoleum), Hanoi Pérez Cordero (silkscreen), Isolina Limonta Rodríguez (lithography), Dania Fleites (etching), and Alejandro Ramón Saínz Alfonso (silkscreen and linoleum).
$1,800