Artist Member
Summer in the time of smoke, heat, and rain
Otoño
Roiling Habana
Steven Daiber
Red Trillium Press
www.redtrilliumpress.com
Instagram – @aquiesredtrilliumpress
BIO
Red Trillium Press is the work of Steven Daiber based in Massachusetts. Daiber has worked with books for more than thirty years. He has been to Cuba regularly since 2001 and has facilitated dialogue between Cuban and foreign artists. His books create real, metaphorical objects: palaces of the memory in which each element underscores a meaning. The books Daiber creates in collaboration with Cuban artists tell stories of the lived reality in Cuba in the 21st century.
Living in rural Massachusetts for over three decades has presented a broad canvas to engage with a changing landscape. Working outdoors utilizing found materials as the matrix, have profoundly influenced his work. These images serve as talismans of the land, formed through years of observation, collecting, imprinting, and collaging.
Daiber’s professional work as an artist originated with training in drawing and painting, with a M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1981 and a B.F.A. from the University of Delaware in 1978. His books are in the collections at MoMA, Cuban Heritage Collection: University of Miami, Stanford, Yale, The British Art Museum, and the Museo National de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba to name but a few.
Books that create palaces of memory in which each element underscores a meaning.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
For two decades, Daiber’s artistic focus centered on Cuba. Starting in 2001 with his family, he made annual trips, spending anywhere from two weeks to a year in Havana. Working in eight different print shops alongside Cuban printmakers, Daiber developed artist book collaborations that recorded the strained politics between the U. S. and Cuba and the toll it took on individual Cubans. He delved into the stories of lives lived, building camaraderie with Cubans and documenting the history unfolding before him.
This process of visual storytelling has been honed during the repeated visits to Havana. Daiber now returns to themes of environmental issues explored before his time in Cuba with renewed interest in the stories he finds within his personal landscape.
At 68 years, Daiber carries the experiences of landscapes that no longer exist, the subtleties of flora and fauna that his daughter’s generation will never witness. Living in rural Massachusetts for over three decades has presented a broad canvas to engage with a changing landscape. Working outdoors utilizing found materials as the matrix, have profoundly influenced his work. These images serve as talismans of the land, formed through years of observation, collecting, imprinting, and collaging.