Alfonsina y el Floripondio

Alfonsina y el floripondio, 2024
Offset ink monotype and embossing on handmade cotton paper with deckled edge
28 x 21 cm

One of a kind monotype created while in residence at La Ceiba Gráfica in Veracruz. This work combines the motifs of the floripondio, angel's trumpet, and the lightning whelk, a unique shell native to the Gulf of Mexico and Eastern seaboard. The floripondio draws on my interest in the delirium of the remembered landscape, while the lightning whelk, sinistrum perversum fulgurum, evokes Edouard Glissant's concept of fulguration, poesis as lightning-like inspiration. Importantly, the lightning whelk is a shell that was used as a tool and sacred object by the Calusa, a native population of my adopted home town whose erasure and vestigial presence figures strongly in my work.