Ink from the Well
resin, synthetic turquoise, plastic turquoise from nana, avocado pits, avocado ink, sterling silver, avocado dyed cotton, acrylic paint on wood, and rubber tubing
2025
Inheriting the jewelry of my Chicanx grandmother and her sisters, most of these heirlooms are plastic. A facsimile of a stone that symbolizes water– a powerful concept in the aridity of the Southwestern desert, turquoise has been imitated since Ancient Egypt. All stones of this blue-green color were valued and referred to as chalchihuitl in the American Southwest before being transformed into capital by organization into a hierarchy of value and scarcity. Synthetic turquoise acts as a return to Indigenous thinking about this stone. Simultaneously, these themes of authenticity reflect upon blood quantum policies and the blurred cultural identity of being Chicanx. Placed in conversation with avocados, a symbol of the food that nurtures me, I envision all of the past generations that have come together into my muddied Chicanx body– bodies as pits and pits as bodies. The 3D printed vessel is stained by the ink and melded with traditional silversmithing adornment that blurs modernity with tradition.
Carried in the vessel is ink made from the same avocados that are strung down the wearers back. A lineage constantly felt down your spine yet obscured from view, the wearer is invited to draw from the well cradled in the hollow of their chest. The pigment serves as a possibility for drawing possible futures in this lineage.