The year 2008 marks more than 400 years that santos have been made in Santa Fe. The majority of santeros and santeras throughout Northern New Mexico continue to make their retablos and bultos the same way we have for those four centuries: homemade gesso, natural pigments, and pinon sap varnish! The processes are the same and the beauty, obviously, equally so.

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Of his present home, Bimonte relates, "When I came to New Mexico and saw the art, I said "Wow!" But his journey to the Land of Enchantment took many years. He left Uruguay on an odyssey of discovery in the late 1970s, "because I could see no future for me in my country," he says.

The creation of art was in Bimonte's blood, a driving ambition. His grandfather had been, in Bimonte's words, a driving monumental sculpture," working with Carrara marble from northern Italy; his brother is a painter in Uruguay. "I first went to Italy and then to Spain. In Spain, I traded my artwork for tuition to go to cooking school. Later I went to Mexico." About 1980, he arrived in New York City where he worked as a chef. By 1982, offered employment as a chef for a private oil company, Bimonte arrived in New Mexico where he married Barbara Jaramillo, a distant relative of Santa Fe's mayor.

The artist is a workaholic, spending as many as twenty hours a day in his studio preparing retablos, mixing paint, making frames, and painting. His motto is "People want to see something fresh." With that in mind, he covers his wooden surfaces with chicken wire and applies stucco, instead of the traditional gesso, adding texture and interest to the work. Employed at one time for a furniture maker, the artist is a highly skilled carpenter. "The frame," says Bimonte, "is an important part of the picture." He makes his own elaborate and painted frames that may also contain sculptural elements - each one intended to augment the subject matter of the finished retablo. While his work is contemporary, his subjects are timeless, so the frames are antiqued with a wire brush and the retablo is finished with a coat of floor wax instead of the traditional beeswax coating used on retablos in Northern New Mexico.

Bimonte has a retablo in the church in Truchas, New Mexico. Recently, in the fall of 1997, he lectured at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, in connection with the traveling exhibition organized by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology of the University of New Mexico and entitled "Cuando Hablan Los Santos: Contemporary Santero Traditions from Northern New Mexico.' He has been honored in a one man show by the Uruguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. El Museo Florida in Uruguay has a collection of his art.

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When he was thirteen, Mr. Brito began carving faces. By the age of twenty he started selling bultos door to door to the faithful for ten or fifteen dollars. It was Lorenzo López, Sr., who taught him to make paint brushes from the eyelashes of pigs and horses. During the early years people purchased his bultos strictly for devotional purposes. The bultos were blessed and taken to the local church's altars or to home altars.

Beginning in the 1980s, Mr. Brito began making folk art animals - burros, roosters, rabbits, etc. - which were highly collected by tourists. Many of Mr. Brito's animals found there way into national folk art exhibitions and museums. They are still today considered highly collectable, including his Noah's Arks, which often contain scores of his folk animals in pairs.

The earliest works were painted with water-based pigments or homemade pigments. However, to make the pieces more stable Mr. Brito later switched to acrylic paints. He was among the first artists to show his work at the Spanish Market where he won numerous ribbons and awards, including the "Master's Award for Lifetime Achievement" in 1996.

Mr. Brito's work may be seen in numerous museums, including the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art, the Museum of American Folk Art, the Museum of International Folk Art, and the Albuquerque Museum. One of his bultos, "San Ysidro", was presented to Pope John Paul II during the Pope's visit to California in 1987. Another bulto was presented to President Bill Clinton.

Sadly, this quiet humble man, passed away in 2004, but not before popularizing bultos and folk art from the second half of the 20th Century to present. A collection of his work may be seen and purchased at Móntez Gallery.

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Grace was born in Albuquerque and raised in Magdalena, New Mexico, where her family has deep roots. When her grandfather, William R. Dobson, came to New Mexico from Colorado, he married Emilia Garcia, a very talented self-taught painter whose family had been sheep ranchers for several generations. On the Spanish side of her family, she actually has ancestors buried under the mission church of San Miguel in Socorro, New Mexico.

After a pilgrimage to the famous medieval shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain, Grace became very interested in her own Spanish ancestry as well as Spanish art and culture. "When I went to Santiago, I had this profound sense of being connected to a very ancient and beautiful tradition. I wanted to explore that in more depth," she says. So she went on to major in Spanish Literature at New Mexico State University and then graduate work in Art History, focusing on the Spanish Medieval and /Renaissance periods. "During this time, I also became more aware of the continuity between medieval Spanish artistic traditions and the traditional art of Northern New Mexico."

The cultural awakening finally led Grace to become a self-taught santera. She says that her ancestors on both sides have given her a spiritual as well as a cultural legacy which is very rich, indeed. One of her most prized possessions is a bulto of "San Antonio" which was passed down to her from her great-great grandfather, Abran Abeyta, who was the alcalde in Socorro, New Mexico, for many years. She also has a bulto of "El Santo Niño de Atocha" which belonged to her great grandmother, Encarnación Abeyta Garcia. "I want to pass on what I have received," she says.

On her mother's side, Grace is Ukrainian, Polish and Hungarian. Because her maternal grandmother was an Orthodox Christian, icons were also a familiar part of Grace's world growing up. This eastern European ancestry has, in turn, inspired Grace to become a self-taught iconographer as well as a santera. "There are a lot of things in common between icons and retablos," Grace says. In exploring the rich artistic traditions of Eastern and Western Christianity, then, Grace has found a deep sense of cultural identity and spiritual purpose.

Grace's work is found in private collections across the United States and abroad. A major example of her work, "The Christ of Victory", a near life-size icon crucifix, can be seen in St. Albert the Great Newman Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where it is located behind the altar. It was commissioned in 2001 and completed a year later. Also, Móntez Gallery in Santa Fe recently sold her "The Light of the Day Jesus Icon" to the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire and received a letter from the Bishop thanking her for the icon and indicating the important placement of honor in their cathedral.

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Lydia Garcia, the eldest of five daughters, is one of the foremost female santeras creating spiritual art today. As a life-long resident of Ranchos de Taos, steeped in the Hispanic traditions of art, culture and religion, her art reflects her cultural heritage in all of its passion and depth.

As a young girl, Lydia worked alongside her father, Elias, while he created santos and wonderful objects in his wood-working shop. Her hunger for art brought her to the studios of two artists, Ward Lockwood and Andrew Dasburg. In their studios, Lydia sat without saying a word so that they would permit her to watch them work. After these sessions she would run home to her mother's kitchen where she would paint the underside of an oil tablecloth, using the precious gifts of old brushes and partially used tubes of paints that her mentors had given her. In this manner, Lydia initiated her own training. She still paints anything she can get her hands on: recycled wood, tin cans, old furniture, and treasures left outside her home by neighbors and friends.

Today Lydia is a full-time santera and continues to paint and sculpt in the same adobe workspace built by her grandfather, Antonio Vigil, where she was born and raised working with her father. Here she integrates contemporary media, such as acrylics and recycled and found materials. Although modern in technique, the core of Lydia's work embodies the traditional faith in God and spirituality in her historic role of santera.

Lydia inspires others with her faith. "Life is a prayer," she says. She gives thanks to God for the many blessings in her life, including five children, ten grand children and two great-grand children. She passes on blessings to her collectors in the form of unique hand-painted prayers found on the back of her work. For others, she teaches workshops, blessing her students through her instruction and guidance. Her passion and faith touch the many folk she encounters through her art, her prayers and teachings.

Lydia's retablos and bultos have been acquired by some of the finest private collections and museums worldwide.

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Born in 1902 to José Dolores López and María Candelaria Trujillo in Córdova, New Mexico, Ricardo was married to Benita Reino and was the younger brother of George (see George López biography). Although his work was earlier known under the name of his wife (most of the wives of the Córdova male artists do the detail "chip" carving), in 1927 Ricardo started signing his larger pieces.

After World War II, Ricardo quit carving human forms for two reasons: he believed they may be interpreted as "graven images" that might be idolized, contrary to the Commandments, and "because it is wrong to sell the saints to the tourists." He later became known for his "Trees of Life", birds, and other animals. Speaking of Ricardo and Benita, Charles L. Briggs, in The Wood Carvers of Córdova, New Mexico (The University of Tennessee Press, 1978), writes: "They are quite imaginative and have innovated a number of features in carvings of this genre. Curved branches often grace trees, and piglets nurse from the sow in neat rows . . . Benita and Ricardo have mastered the art of carving these intricate figures, and their repertoire of such pieces is possibly the largest."

In June 1977 Benita died and Nora Cerrano, their daughter, began carving with Ricardo. The two worked together until Ricardo's death in 199_. Although his father, José Dolores, is the most important santero of the first half of the twentieth century, with work in every major folk art museums including the Smithsonian, Ricardo claimed that he taught his father to carve. As stated by Dr. Briggs in The Wood Carvers of Córdova, "He [Ricardo] states that he innovated the carving of monotone images, that he produced the first examples, and that his father and brothers learned from him. After carving this first group of images, however, Ricardo decided that such work was sacrilegious; he never carved images again."

Whether he was the innovator or not, if Ricardo had continued to carve human forms, his work would be extremely important today. However, his carvings continue to be very important historically. A collection of Córdova collections is not complete without work by Ricardo.

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Jimmy Madrid was born in Deming, New Mexico, and raised in Las Cruces. Self-taught artist, performed restoration for Lane Coulter, co-author of New Mexican Tinwork: 1840-1940. Jimmy began showing his work for the first time with wife Mary Jo and son Nicolás at Móntez Gallery in 1989.

Mary Jo Madrid was born in Yonkers, NY, to an Irish father and Italian mother. She attended Catholic schools from primary grades through high school and later attended Dunbarton College of the Holy Cross. Mary Jo studied painting with Jackie Nelson in the "Blessed Mother" course and icon painting with Vladisilav Andrejev.

Nicolás Madrid was born in 1982 in La Madera, New Mexico. He learned tinwork from his father. He is also a student of flamenco guitar at Northern New Mexico Community College.

"Epiphany": "Affordability. We've always earned our living from working with our hands. It is the ultimate spiritual test. Making art must be combined with spirituality. When we're not making art we're raising pigeons and chickens."

AWARDS

Jimmy Madrid was accepted to the Spanish Colonial Arts Society's Spanish Market in 1995 where he won the "Bienvenidos Award." In 1997 he won the "First Prize Spanish Market Rancho de las Golondrinas Award." In 1998 he won the "Spanish Market Purchase Award."

Mary Jo won the "Second Prize Saint Bernard Institute of Sacred Art Award" in 1997 at the Viva Guadalupe Show at the Santuario de Guadalupe. In 199 she won "Honorable Mention" at The Period Gallery Spiritual Art Show and "Special Recognition" in 1998.

Nicolás won the "Spanish Market First Prize in 1998. In 1999 he won the "Spanish Market Purchase Award." In 1998 he won "First" and "Second Place" at the Espanola Valley Student Show for "Traditional Art" and "Craftsmanship Award."

COLLECTIONS

Gene Autry Museum, Los Angeles Iglesia de Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz
The Regis University Collection, Denver Faith Center, Espanola
Rancho de las Golondrinas, La Cienega

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Antonio was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, but raised in Taos as a young boy. His parents are the late P.I. (Prudencio Isaac) Martinez and Anna (Anamelia) Sánchez Martinez, who still lives in Taos; he is the second sibling of three (two sisters). Antonio's family has been noted and recorded through his mother's side of the family to New Mexico's first governor, Don Juan de Oñate, as well as the notorious "Billy the Kid".

Antonio's first experience with carving was at the age of thirteen. He is self-taught and began carving in stone mainly as a hobby until about fifteen years ago. He started carving in cedar, a wood readily available in Taos, when stone was not available. Mr. Martinez now carves Southwestern art themes in both stone and wood. He began selling his art in many well known galleries in Taos, including the Millicent Rogers Museum and the St. Francis de Assisi Gift Shop in Ranchos de Taos. He is known to have carvings in twenty-eight states, Canada and Germany. His carvings consist of bultos in wood (three-dimensional images of saints), and carvings of eagles, bears, American Indians, cowboys, horses, etc. He has done figurative work as well.

Antonio has always been intrigued by art, painting, sculpture and carving. However, his passion has always been carving. Currently, he has focused more on carving due to a debilitating back injury at work, which in turn has changed his life and moved him in a spiritual direction. He is currently carving santos, with his favorite saint being St. Jude, the saint of impossible causes and lost souls. He plans to be carving saints in stone soon.

Antonio has a great love for life and loves living it! "Lets go fishing!", is his motto.

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I have always had an inner desire to create from the time I was a child scratching out little drawings. As for creating santos, that came much later as I was always a "trouble maker" in catechism and in church. In some ways I guess I still am because I always questioned the church and still do. In many ways, I believe this makes my faith even stronger.

I almost always carve at the kitchen table or outside in the shade. The kitchen is my favorite place because it is the center of a lot of action and a real place of creative energy. When I carve a santo, I don't think it is museum bound. Instead, I prefer to think of it as altar bound.

My artwork is of the people, created by and for the people, not museums or universities. It is an artwork of the heart and not of the mind. I believe the message of the santos can only be conveyed by the heart and soul and not some textbook. I am artistically influenced by the early New Mexican santeros because I find that their pure and simple style is powerful even today.

When I carve I am inspired by, and connected to, the events of the world, both good and bad, much like the santeros of the past who were connected to their small and remote world. It is this inspiration that drives me to create santos in hopes that their message of love, salvation and hope are communicated.

Whenever I am asked why I make santos, I just say, "Look at the world around you. Don't you think we need them?"

Gallery Note: Chris has been our number one selling "bulto" artist since we began representing him four years ago.

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I was also blessed to have my mother's parents from Chimayó. Don Hemerejildo (named for the first German Catholic king who was sainted) and his wife, Trinidad ("The Trinity") Jaramillo, built the home that is now the Rancho de Chimayó Restaurant. Although I never knew this beautiful grandmother, she was part of a wonderful weaving tradition with her husband. As a child I would frequently visit Chimayó, which always included going to the Santuario. Can you imagine being raised in Northern New Mexico and attending mass at the Santuario de Guadalupe and the Santuario in Chimayó? Could I not have been steeped in a tradition older than the buildings themselves?

I have always loved to draw. My best friend and I would spend hours in his basement drawing horses and making our own comic books. When I was nine I painted my first watercolor of "Cristo Crucificado" which hangs over the altar at the Santuario de Chimayó. That same year my uncle sent my father some Japanese paintings he had collected during the Korean war. I remember how much they influenced my thinking about how watercolors could be a simple brushstroke. When I began junior high, I was lucky to have a teacher from Santo Domingo Pueblo who was a master at making art. He showed me more about the use of watercolors. The day he took me and a few other students to the State Fair in Albuquerque, I didn't know he had submitted one of my paintings and, there it was, with a big blue ribbon. The time before that I had this same feeling was when I was even younger and the grade school I attended took us to the Fine Arts Museum. I will never forget walking upstairs and seeing a huge and wild sunflower grow as I moved my little feet up the stairs. The now deceased painter, Tommy Macaione, blew me away that day. I drew a horse that year that won my family tickets to the Santa Fe Rodeo. For me, making art is saying an everlasting prayer.

NOTE: Articles about Rey Móntez have been published in the National Geographic Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Luxury Living, The Spanish Market Magazine, El Nuevo Mexicano, Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe Reporter, The New Mexican, Sandoval Arts, and Southwest Art. His writings on santos appear in Spanish New Mexico: The Collection of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, Charlie Carrillo: Tradition & Soul, The Spanish Market Magazine, Traditions, and El Nuevo Mexicano. Rey has won numerous awards for his paintings.

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Marilyn and John Moyes live in the art community of Kayenta in southern Utah. Marilyn started making “functional art” cabinets with John as a hobby. The cabinets became popular with neighbors and eventually they entered them in the Kayenta Art Festival and local Saint George galleries.

After retiring from nursing, Marilyn had time to explore painting on wood by herself. Her paintings of American Indians and landscapes were shown in the local galleries in Kayenta. It was after they had requests for Frida Kahlo and the Virgin of Guadalupe icons to be placed on John’s cabinets that Marilyn got the inspiration to make retablos. They had been collecting religious folk art from Mexico and Central and South America for a long time, so religious art was familiar and a love of theirs. The addition of milagros (miracles) to the garments of her patron saints not only add texture to the saint’s picture, but repeat their traditional use.

In Mexico, a person may pin a milagro onto the garment of a patron saint’s statue to remind the saint of the suppllicant’s special favor. Churches in Mexico have wood pillars for people to nail their milagros onto, or baskets where milagros can be placed. It is rumored that the saints are jealous of each other’s milagros and like to “out do” each other. Marilyn tries to put milagros on her paintings that are indicative of what that patron saint might be invoked for, and takes her images of the saints from Catholic holy cards.

Marilyn has been represented in galleries in Utah for several years. Her retablos have also been in the Desert Bloom Festival in Kayenta/Ivins, Utah. John is a master carpenter, grandson of David Huges, the famous wood carver from England. He is responsible for the wood, furniture and carvings that Marilyn paints on.

The Moyes are honored to show their work at the Montez Gallery in Santa Fe, where they know their work will be understood and appreciated.

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On June 2, 1990, Miguel was in an automobile accident with fatal results for one of Miguel's co-workers and unfortunately resulted in Miguel being paralyzed. At that time Miguel had no idea that this accident would be the beginning of a newfound career.

His stay at the hospital was a long dreadful three months that led him into severe depression. He was immediately surrounded by hospital staff that would seek assistance for this young man who was suddenly stranded in a town without family.

Miguel's physical therapist introduced him to a woman named Teri Hutchison. Teri had previously received therapy and was instrumental in encouraging Miguel during this unfortunate time. Miguel, unable to speak English and Teri, not knowing Spanish, both proceeded on their new adventure. Her first assignment was to have Miguel carve a wooden egg with the packing knife she provided. Miguel quickly finished this project and tackled a small elephant carving to proudly demonstrate to Teri that he was ready for the challenge. They met once a week with the group of the Chat' N Chipaway Club at the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church Meeting Center carving bultos and relief sculptures.

Miguel is married to Honorina; they have one daughter, Fabiola. Miguel credits his devoted wife of fourteen years for all her love and support of her family. Honorina is the warp that binds the family together and he calls her his consentida y amor. Miguel says without her assistance it would take him much longer to accomplish all his tasks. Honorina is Miguel's "Right-Hand" in all his endeavors and his artistic undertakings from making homemade gesso to assisting with final sanding. His immediate family, which includes his younger sister and brother, Carolina and Jose, accompany Miguel to his art shows. They collectively set up and take down his displays at each show Miguel proudly attends.

The Pérez family is unique, full of life, laughter and a sense of pride in one another. Their true devotion to God is demonstrative in their family and truly present in the art they share. If one speaks to Miguel about his work, he so humbly states that his accomplishments have all come about from the grace of God.

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The year 1996 was a dark one for Rael. His 36-year career as a paint contractor was cut short by a disabling back injury. As he slowly recuperated in bed, depression and worry set in. Worry over himself, over his family. He sought comfort in prayer and began drawing to help pass the time.

He gradually realized that, more and more, his drawings were of a religious nature, and he had what could easily be called an epiphany.

"All of a sudden it sort of hit me like a brick on the head that God was telling me something, that there was something I could do," he said. "It dawned on me that this was the direction he was pulling me in." Carlos then realized he received a gift that could come only from God, as well as a sense that this was his destiny.

Carlos is fortunate to have become a student and friend of the renowned New Mexico Santero Gustavo Victor Goler, whom he has studied with since 1999. He says Goler gave him wisdom, knowledge and focus for his energies, helping him become more aware of what he needed to do in Carlos' new purpose in life. "It's been a tremendous help", he said.

Carlos moved from drawing to carving, working in the ancient Hispanic folk art tradition of the santero, carving religious iconic figures, a tradition which has endured for centuries since the Spanish Colonial period, when New Mexico was cut off from the Catholic church and had no access to the religious art in Mexico City. The Santero tradition was born of necessity, and Rael's was as well.

In 1999 Carlos was accepted for Spanish Market and was selected for the Spanish Market 2000 poster award with his figure of San Ramon Nonato. In 2002, Rael won Best of Santos at the Taos Fall Arts Festival for his piece "Nuestra Senora de Loretto with Nicho" and third place at the New Mexico State Fair's Hispanic Art building for his "Santo Niño Perdido."

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José Guadalupe Hernández Reyna comes from a four hundred year artistic tradition in his family.

Born in the city of Cuernavaca Morelos in Mexico in 1955, the artist began at an early age to work as a sculptor and restorer in the workshop of his parents. It was from both that he learned the ancient techniques of three-dimensional "bulto" and two-dimensional "retablo" saint-making. These were traditions conserved from generation to generation in his family since Mexico's sixteenth century evangelization.

Trained at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, he has devoted his life to the production of art, which includes religious sculpture that is minute to monumental in scale, as well as articulated, caballete painting, and two-dimensional saint painting and restoration.

His sculptural works can be found in churches and in private collections in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Japan, Indonesia, Venezuela, Panama and Costa Rica. Among other recognitions, in 1981 he was distinguished with the National First Prize in Painting from the Consejo Nacional de Cultura.

His three-dimensional "bultos" are made in the traditional "estofato" technique developed by the Spanish and Italians during the middle-ages. After carving the art piece from wood, gesso is applied in several coats. A red clay slip covers the gesso, and then 22 karate gold leaf is meticulously applied to the entire piece. Oil pigment is then applied to the image. When dry, the oil pigment is selectively removed to reveal the gold leaf. This technique was developed to replicate the porcelain art objects seen by the Spanish and Italians in their travels to the Far East.

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"There were many influences which led me to carve and paint religious images.

"It seems that carving wood has always been a part of my life. I can remember as a child sitting under the shade of a pecan tree in the heat of summer carving faces and animals using the scrap wood and fallen branches of the tree.

"Also, like many Mexican Americans, a sense of religious tradition has consistently been a part of my family life. During my childhood I recall my maternal grandfather constructing simple "nichos", when necessary, using wood from discarded fruit crates.

"In 1987, as a result of visiting the Spanish Governor's Palace and Missions in San Antonio, I developed a serious interest in the art and material culture of the Colonial Period. It was at this time I managed to find several books on the subject and proceeded to create my first Santo.

"By 1988, because I was dissatisfied with the quality of my work, I decided to seek assistance. It was by chance that I read a New Mexico publication advertising the work of Charles Carrillo, a Santero. During the summer of 1988, en route to San Antonio from a vacation in California, I stopped in for a visit. Although this first introduction to the Santos of New Mexico lasted only one Saturday morning, I gained insight, information, and encouragement to last a lifetime. I will be forever grateful to Charlie!

"Since that encounter with the Maestro, Charlie Carrillo, I make it a point to stop by his residence either in Spring or Summer annually to get feedback on my most current work, as well as share information I may have found in South Texas and Mexico."

Alfredo Rodríguez is the winner of numerous awards, including a certificate from La Universidad de Puerto Rico for his participation in their I Feria Internacional de Artesanías en Puerto Rico, FIAPRI 2000. He is also a full-time firefighter in San Antonio.

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Virginia María Romero was born in Sheffield Lake, Ohio. Currently Ms. Romero's work is represented by Móntez Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and by Nash Gallery, Mesilla, New Mexico. Ms. Romero's work is also on exhibit at San Miguel Mission, (The Oldest Church), Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Ms. Romero's retablos, bultos, reredos, doors, and crosses are done in the traditional Northern New Mexico style using carved and adzed pine, hand collected materials to make natural pigments such as black walnut (nuts from tree), cochineal (worm from prickly pear cactus), ochre (from rock) and other water-soluble pigments, homemade gesso, homemade piñon sap varnish, and wax. Ms.Romero
learned traditional recipes for retablos from world-renowned santero Charlie Carrillo.

Ms. Romero's retablos, bultos, reredos, crosses, doors, oil paintings and beadwork are in international, national and local private collections.

Ms. Romero has also, upon request, donated her artwork to benefit organizations such as Jardin de los Niños, Las Cruces, New Mexico and Youth Shelters and Family Services of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Memorial Medical Center Foundation First Step Center, Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Ms. Romero's "Sacred Skins" beaded leather creations appear in The Sacred Hunt documentary, which is available on video, and were worn by the producer, Randall Eaton Ph.D., in the video.

Ms. Romero is also a published and award winning poet.

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Together with her husband, Mark A. Santistevan, she created Santos de Santistevan, a cooperative and creative partnership dedicated to creating devotional art. Their motto is, “Connecting people with their faith through art.”

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Considered the most important santero of the second half of the twentieth century, Horacio Valdez (b. 1929 Dixon, NM; d.1992 Apodaca, NM) began carving as an adult in the mid-1970s after an accident crushed his hand in 1975. "I couldn't hold a hammer," he said, "but I could whittle." Thus began his prolific career where he is noted for his influence in re-energizing traditional religious imagery in the highest quality workmanship.

"I started carving as a hobby," he explained, "just to pass the time" as he convalesced. However, an instant genius in carving and painting, Horacio never returned to construction work after his hand healed. Instead, he began to make the most beautiful bultos (three-dimensional saints), and occasionally retablos (two-dimensional paintings of saints on wood) and reredos (altar screens). Unfamiliar with pigments, he walked into an art supply store and the salesman sold him acrylics. His medium throughout his life, acrylics became an acceptable medium, replacing the natural, home-made pigments used by many of his peers. Keeping his palate simple, like that of his predecessors, his application of acrylics were rendered in a warm, washed-look resembling natural pigments. Looking at books of work by his artistic antecedents, he worked as they did, more from spiritual inspiration and faith. "Eran artistas de fe, no de escuela," Horacio said of Rafael Aragón and other early santeros.

Although he considered his blue and green crucifixes as his most important work, Horacio was equally known for his death carts, aka Doña Sebastiana, La Muerte, or Carreta de la Muerte. The bulto is of a woman skeleton who sits in a cart typically with a bow and arrow (ergo, "Mrs. Sebastian") or other hand-carved weapons of death. The last part of a procession held on Good Friday by the Hermandad de Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, or penitentes, throughout Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, she represents benevolent death and Christ's victory over death. As with the black widow, she entices man to her (her legs are always open) and, after consummation, she kills her lover. One of Horacio's death carts, entitled "Carreta de Muerte" (1978) resides in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Indeed, all major folk art museums, including the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, the International Folk Art Museum, the Museum of American Folk Art, the Taylor Museum, and the Albuquerque Museum, own at least one death cart by him. It is a particularly difficult piece to carve, demonstrating the carver's true skills and artistic aesthetic.

Raised as an orphan after his mother died in 1942 and his father, a World War II veteran, in 1943, Horacio was raised by his grandmother and uncles. Although content to concentrate on his many world-wide commissions, this humble artist was kind enough to permit Móntez Gallery to represent his work. It was this orphan boy who named the business Móntez Gallery and who made the business the success it is today.

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