Tesoro Foundation’s Spanish Market and 1830s Rendezvous do not have to be of Spanish or Mexican descent.
“(But) the artists’ work has to be in the Spanish colonial style, and there are 24 pages of guidelines artists must meet to be accepted for the show,” event coordinator Lainey Spera said.
There is no need here to go into all the dos and don’ts. Just know that all the works you will see at the art show this weekend on the grounds of the the Fort restaurant historically link back to the art produced by early settlers in New Mexico and southern Colorado.
That includes the santos carved by Don Headlee of Las Animas.
The retired schoolteacher traces his family roots back to Ireland and England. But his inspiration – call him his artistic father – was the late George López, a santeros who learned to carve at the knee of his father, the legendary José Dolores López.
“The most common traditional mediums are wood for the carving, which is called bulto,” Headlee said in a recent telephone interview. “The other type, which is usually a painted picture on a piece of wood … is called a retablo.”
He added that a few people use nontraditional material, such as metal, to make santos.
The tradition of santos came to what is now the Southwestern United States in the 1500s from Spain via Mexico.
“In Spain, it was more done by a professional artist or people who that was their task,” Headlee said. “Where in the New World, even though there were some people who primarily did this for a living, a lot of the work was done by carpenters, farmers (and) lay people instead of professional artists.”
Headlee carves santos from the roots of cottonwood trees, which is a traditional medium in New Mexico. Early santeros also used pine and Aspen.
“Of course, they were soft enough so the tools that they had at the time could work with that type of wood,” Headlee said.
Santos were displayed and used for worship in both churches and the home.
Traditionally, bulto santos were brightly painted, but the elder López broke from that custom so his santos could display the natural beauty of the aspen wood he used.
This new type of santos was called the Cordovan style after Cordova, N.M., where the López family lived and worked, Headlee said.
It was there that Headlee bought his first santo.
“I was teaching a class at Wheat Ridge High School called Southwest studies,” he said. “And I went on a workshop down to Taos, N.M., with a group of teachers. We went up to the little village of Cordova. And I met George Lopez. … I bought one of his carvings and took it home.”
He sat it on his desk, and after some time decided he wanted to try carving one.
“I went to school, and a shop teacher friend gave me a nice big block of sugar pine and loaned me some carving tools,” he said. “And I haven’t stopped since.”
That was 25 years ago.
One of the elder Lopez’s granddaughters, Gloria Lopez Cordova, also is among the 24 artists selected to demonstrate and sell their art this weekend.
The art show is only part of the event, which is expected to draw about 3,000 people. It also features mountain men interpreters and traders.
“Interpreters are solely there for education,” Spera said. “They’re the ones setting up tepees. And they have a display of things you would use, and they’re there to answer questions and to be educational.”
The traders are crafters who use traditional methods to make such things as hats, coats and shoes for sale to visitors.
“They all have to be completely authentic,” Spera said. “Their stuff all has to be made as it would have been made (in the 1830s).”
Staff writer Ed Will can be reached at 303-820-1694 or ewill@denverpost.com.
2005 Spanish Market and 1830s Rendezvous
ART SHOW AND HISTORICAL REENACTMENTS|The Fort restaurant, 19192 Colorado 8, Morrison, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday|$3-$6, free 11 and younger|303-839-1671 or tesorofoundation.org.
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“LETTERS TO STANLEY”
Snatches of souvenirs. Morsels of memories. Denver artist Julie Puma pays tribute to breast-cancer-awareness month with an extraordinary tapestry of life.
In a deeply moving installation at the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, 350 S. Dahlia St., through Oct. 13, she has sewn together letters and photographs to create a hanging backdrop to a memorial bed of rocks.
The imagery and correspondence relate to her mother and sister, both of whom died of breast cancer. Boosting the emotional potency is the realization that Puma has undergone a double mastectomy because of her extremely high risk of the same disease.
She has taken a simple yet profound idea and realized it with dignity and imagination. The powerful artwork that results is intensely personal yet completely universal.
-Kyle MacMillan
