John Vasquez Mejías Portrait Wax Rub

Portrait made in the back of one of the plates of The Puerto Rican War. Outtake. Wax rub made from a woodcut on vellum paper and sewing on cardstock. Edition of 5, 2024. Approx. tabloid.

John Vasquez Mejias is a writer and artist, printmaker and puppeteer, storyteller, and art teacher. He is best known for his book The Puerto Rican War, detailing a little-known group of Puerto Rican revolutionaries in 1950. The woodcut novelette manages to be a deeply impactful accounting of history as well as a striking work of art.

“Ever since I was little. My father was telling me about Puerto Rican history and the various ways Puerto Ricans get ripped off (...) The fact that the Puerto Rican flag was illegal for years. That they tested bombs there. They used Puerto Ricans as cheap labor. The list goes on and on (...) Somebody once said that we write history to see where we’ve been, and we write fiction to explain how we feel about the history. I don’t know who said that, but I like it and I think about that a lot.”