Carlos Santistevan began carving santos — images of saints — while exploring the New Mexican tradition of religious folk art. “It was part of my Catholic upbringing, a form of evangelism and a way to identify with my people,” he said.
He worked at the kitchen table in his Five Points home, crafting sacred images — saint statues and bultos (wooden sculptures of saints and religious figures), along with altar screens and a series of Stations of the Cross used in old Catholic rituals.
By the late 1970s, he became the first person from Colorado to exhibit at the Spanish Market.
Today, his art is owned by such institutions as the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of International Folk Art.
“He was the first santero to come out of the city and county of Denver, and that opened the doors for other santeros to do what we do,” said , a santero who works as education director at CHAC Gallery & Cultural Center in the Santa Fe Arts District.
On April 15, Santistevan will receive the Lifework Achievement Award from the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, or CHAC, for his work as a santero and a pioneer of the local Chicano arts movement.
He founded , the first Chicano art gallery, and was the first executive director of CHAC, which he co-founded.
“He’s an elder, one of the veteranos, who was creating artworks in the 1960s,” said Carlos Fresquez, an art professor at Metro State University of Denver and a Chicano artist who has shown nationally and internationally. “Here in (Denver), people are definitely aware of his work, but maybe he’s not as known outside the Chicano art community.”
Santistevan will receive the award during CHAC’s month-long exhibition of santos art, a scene he helped pioneer.
About 15 santeros and santeras currently work in the Denver area. They specialize in retablos (devotional paintings on wood) bultos, crosses and Spanish Colonial folk art that will be part of the 15th annual Santos y Cruces exhibition, which opens Friday.
The show will include workshops led by santeros, a discussion by artists of santo history and culture, and sessions for children and adults.
A towering santo
Santistevan still lives in Five Points, where a towering santo of St. Francis graces the front yard. The santo was carved from an elm tree that died on the property.
He makes art at his kitchen table, including an elaborate carving adapted from a piece by Jose Dolores Lopez, the legendary santero born in 1868 in Cordova, N.M., and who pioneered the style of santos carved from unpainted wood.
“Only artwork feeds my soul,” said Santistevan, dressed in a black leather vest over a faded denim shirt.
He became an artist by accident.
As a student at Cathedral High School, he was told he “wasn’t college material,” he said, so he enrolled at Emily Griffith Opportunity School to learn the trade of auto-body repair.
Two nights a week during high school, he took classes in welding.
Eventually, he became good enough to teach welding classes at a local college, and while demonstrating techniques, he got the idea to turn the piece into his first metal sculpture: the head of Christ.
Years later, the local Latino community gave that sculpture to , and it’s now in the Vatican.
Another piece of his welded steel sculpture, is owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
In the late 1960s, working with the local Chicano civil rights movement, he asked , about getting space for a Chicano art gallery in the Crusade for Justice Center.
El Grito de Aztlan Gallery opened there in 1968.
While exploring Mexican-American cultural heritage, seeking his own roots, Santistevan discovered a family connection to , one of the first American-born santeros, who created retablos as early as 1780 in New Mexico.
Santistevan started woodcarving again, which he had started as a child after a trip with his father to Trinidad.
“He was sent out at 5 years old to shepherd,” said Santistevan.
On that visit to southern Colorado, his father took him up to a clearing in the woods where, as a child, he had carved railroad tracks into a large boulder as a way to amuse himself.
Santistevan wanted to carve like his father, so he “started to carve wood with my mother’s kitchen paring knife,” he said.
Decades later, as an adult, he took up woodcarving again and became obsessed with learning everything he could about the history of santos.
He worked with wood, metal and found objects.
One sculpture, “Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,” is made from a round saw, a frying pan and a hubcap.
Fresquez remembers visiting him at his house, where he would be making art in the yard.
“Santos date back to the 1700s, made in the rural traditions in adobe buildings, and he was doing it right in the middle of the city with skyscrapers just a few blocks away,” Fresquez said.
Santistevan fused rural traditions with modern life.
“An urban feel”
“That gave his work an urban feel,” said Fresquez. “Walking down the alley, he’d never know what he’d find. He’d pick things up and save them, and soon combine them, bolting or wiring them together in a crude, slapdash way.”
Chicano artists across the country were doing the same thing — a concept that became the heart of their art movement. Called rasquachismo, it’s about being creative and resourceful by using found objects, often broken fragments or items considered trash.
By the late 1980s, Santistevan had become involved with national scholars, creating the traveling exhibition “Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation,” which linked Chicano art to the Chicano political movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s.
The show, which opened at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1990, became the first Chicano exhibition to receive . Santistevan, as a trustee at the Denver Museum of Art, persuaded its leadership to make Denver the show’s first stop. “More Hispanics showed up on opening night than had showed up ever,” he said.
Santistevan has mentored new generations of artists, including his two children, Carlos Jr. and Brigida, both of whom show at the Spanish Market.
“I try to encourage artists,” he said of the local Chicano art scene. “This is another slice of Americana.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or @coconnordp
Santos y cruces show events,
April 1-29
• Kids Retablo/Santos Workshop, April 9 from 1 to 3 p.m. Cost is $15.
• Reception for Carlos Santistevan, April 15 from 6 to 9 p.m.
• A panel discussion on santeros, April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Free.
• A hands-on adult retablo workshop, April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. Cost is $20.
All events are at CHAC, 772 Santa Fe Drive. For more information, or to register, e-mail education@ chacweb.org.
