Stencil, Week 3

For my stencil image and the cover of the book I decided on a skull. The idea for the skull stems from many places in my life. Dia de Los Muertos is right around the corner, one of my favorite celebrations, and this made me think about the icons it focuses on and uses for honoring the dead-- sugar skulls, papel picado, rich cadaver imagery, and other objects of remembrance. An iconic image in Chicano and Mexican culture that resonates with me is José Guadalupe Posadas “La Calavera Catrina.” A fancy lady corpse dressed up in a big hat adorned with various flowers and feathers. His message here is that in end, no matter who you are or where you come from, we all end up dead, a skeleton, reduced to our simplest most common form. La Calavera Catrina may have been high and mighty before she passed, but we are all the same in the end, and there is no changing that. I connect with the point of Dia de Los Muertos and José Posadas image because they are not supposed to be frightening or mourned over, it is something the celebrate, recognize, and accept, to not fear death, but gracefully accept it. I designed this skull myself and did not fully use La Calavera Catrina, but draw inspiration from it.