Who: Catherine Robles-Shaw, Nederland
Medium: Aspen or pine boards, gesso, paint, varnish
Her story: This self-taught santera, or saint maker, first saw the art form in the churches of the San Luis Valley near her parents’ home in Mogate. But it wasn’t until age 39 that she started making retablos – hand-carved wooden boards painted with saints – for friends and family.
Her first efforts were primitive – “little stick men,” she says.
Four years later, in 1995, she became a full-time artist after successfully exhibiting her work at the Spanish Market in Santa Fe. About that time, she took a workshop with santero Charles Carrillo, a northern New Mexico master of devotional art.
“That changed everything in one week,” she says. “I wanted to do the traditional way, completely.”
Her retablos, altar screens and bultos – hard-carved three-dimensional images of saints – are now prized for their historical accuracy.
She works with local woods, pine and aspen, in the same process used by santeros in the 18th and 19th centuries. Wood is coated in four layers of gesso made from gypsum and rabbit- skin glue. For her paints, she uses plant and insect extracts and mineral-colored earth. Finally, the art work is coated with piñon sap varnish, made by dissolving pitch nuggets in mula, or grain alcohol.
Her award-winning devotional art is in the permanent collections of such institutions as the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe.
She makes about 300 pieces a year; they sell as fast as she can produce them. She’s also taught the art to her daughter, Roxanne Shaw Galindo, who has become an award-winning santera, too.
“She watched me a whole year when I just painted saints; she learned what saints were all about. Then one day she just took up a brush. She was a natural.”
Just like her mother.
Where you can find her work: “Altar Girls” at the Museo de las Americas in Denver, Friday through June 9. The Traditional Spanish Market, July 22-23 in Santa Fe. The Great Southwest Gallery of Colorado Springs. Contact her at 303-258-0544 or metepec@aol.com.
Cost: $50 to $6,000
Philosophy or influences: “Having a good family that stands behind me and lets me do what I want to do,” she says. Her husband, Michael, helps run her business. Their shared goal is the preservation of the beauty and simplicity of Hispanic culture.
– Colleen O’Connor
