cuba

in 2018, I received a grant from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, that allowed me to travel to Cuba, as part of a group of Ohio artists.  While there, we visited with Cuban artists in galleries, studios, and sometimes their homes.  These photographs are all that remains of a one-of-a-kind artist's book, which was created in response to that experience.  The book was part of an exhibition in Matanzas, Cuba in 2019, and was destroyed during that process.

I built the binding from illustration boards, paper and wheat paste, basing the form on a cigar box.  The pages took the form of small flags, like the stuff called "bunting" in my homeland; they were held together with red string.  My original conception of this book was a celebration of the artists who traveled with me, and of the Cuban artists we met on that journey.  It turned out that I found more points of connection in Cuba than I had anticipated, mostly concerning the realities of life as a citizen of a small island nation, and the human bonds that are forged and broken in the inevitable question of whether to stay or leave.  While making this object, it became more deeply personal to me than I could have anticipated.  Additional pages in my book were letters on Airmail paper, folded into origami airplanes and boats.