Alcatraces STENCIL

I had a lot of ideas for this, but the designs turned out to be a bit too complicated for this assignment. I immediately thought of using a picture of a Brown Beret from the early 70s, which I saw at an exhibition at the Autry last year about La Raza newspaper. Unfortunately, the bandoliers she was wearing were just too many to cut out. Instead, I decided on a design of calla lilies. My mom has grown these flowers in her garden for as long as I can remember, and knowing that alcatraces are her favorite makes me feel particularly connected to them. These flowers reoccur in images, most notably Diego Rivera's many paintings of women with calla lilies. Perhaps as a result of following this precedent, I see these flowers in so much of the art at the Mexican restaurants I grew up visiting with my family. They often accompanied brightly colored Aztec scenes or sprawling wildernesses or dancing couples. I particularly remember a painting in a restaurant in Paramount that shows a woman cooking tortillas on a comal, framed by calla lilies. 

Although I am associating these flowers with art, my personal experience of them is much more communal and "low brow" than seeing a Rivera oil painting of a woman and bouquet that would hang in a museum. Also, I just went down a rabbit-hole trying to find the etymology of "alcatraces" in Spanish and why it's different from "alcatrazes," as in Alcatraz Island. The latter means albatross (or some other seabird?) and comes from Arabic (maybe??). I have no idea about the flower, though.