Gringo Death Coloring Book is a collaborative artist book made in the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact on Puerto Rico. The text by Raquel Salas Rivera, excerpted from their full length book While They Sleep (Under the Bed Is Another Country) [Birds, LLC 2019] is dialogic fragments interspersed with prose poems reflecting on the lasting impact of colonial trauma, arranged around the two different discourses. Hand-carved linoleum images made and printed by Mariana Ramos Ortiz. Book designed and bound, and text letterpress printed by Erica Mena.
Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon is a collection of letterpress broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets, in English and in Spanish. Edited by Raquel Salas Rivera and Erica Mena, published by Anomalous Press.
GATHERING
Gathering is a unique artist book made during a month-long residency at Arteles in Finland in 2015. Collage, found objects, and embroidery.
COURTING AN ORBIT
6 1/4″ x 6 18″
Handmade letterpress printed by Erica Mena. Poems by Alma Baumwoll. Illustrations by Katie Hargrave. This book was hand-set in Palatino lead type and printed on Rives Heavyweight paper on a Vandercook SP-15 at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. Sewn in a double pamphlet with tipped on mulberry endpapers, it was made in a limited edition of fifty numbered and signed copies.
Erica Mena 