“I planted that tree which you know is straight and full of life”.
I first learned of Patrociño Barela’s work when seeing a large collection of his at the Harwood Museum in Taos. Patriciño Barela born around 1900, was raised as a sheep herder, a laborer, a wanderer due to work and immigration in his early life, but innately he was an artist and a santero. In New Mexico, a santero is someone who carves saints and spiritual figures primarily out of red cedar wood. Patrociño would describe his work as “santo feeling” not strictly santo santo as the catholic New Mexican histories would say.
When I first came upon his work, his figures struck me so much - like a punch in the stomach - the faces and movement carved in the wood reminded me of susto, the soul pain, my friend and mentor Camilla Trujillo describes. I couldn’t stop staring at them never wanting to leave their side. When I read the title card beside them, I was blown away that I had gone this far in my life without knowing of his work and that as a New Mexican artist, his work was highlighted in such an elevated way that I had only seen of white contemporaries.
After that museum visit I couldn’t stop reading about Patrociño and his life - I learned he began carving when a friend asked if he could repair a broken santo, made of multiple pieces of wood, a common way of making santos especially larger pieces - Patrociño fixed the piece and found that there was more integrity if the santo was made from one single piece, not multiple. From that moment on he became a santero, and described the initiation as “I planted that tree which you know is straight and full of life”.
In 1936, he had eight of his pieces (more than any other artist exhibited in the same show) as part of a group show at the Museum of Modern art in New York.. The show was organized by the Federal Art Project, and included unknown artists from all over the country. TIME Magazine declared Patrociño as “discovery of the year”. His work was likened to Romanesque carvings of the 11th and 12th century, described as “primitive” a high compliment of the time when artists like Picasso were investing in collections of African and Indigenous sculpture, pieces that greatly informed the silhouettes his work. He received so much praise after his group show that he would have autograph requests in mail, hand written letters requesting he sign a printed portrait of himself. The Federal Art Project allowed Patrociño to make work full time, still making less than he would with his labor jobs, it sustained him and his work. After his New York show there was a serious pursuit in having a solo show of his in galleries in New York.
Patrociño primarily a native Spanish speaker, wasn’t able to read and could barely write - this along with his cultural differences from those of the New York art world distanced his ability to take on his business affairs himself, advocate properly for himself, and pursue the interest that existed on the east coast. His person was often ‘protected’ for the sake of anglo art dealers that were close to him. It is said that a gallery in Taos would often trade a piece of his for a bottle of wine. One art collector discovered his work when seeing it as a door stop for a store off the Taos Plaza. After WWII ended, the Federal Art Program was defunded and national interest in Patrocino’s work began to fade. He returned to work as a sheep herder and picking potatoes in Colorado. He migrated all the way to Wyoming more than once for labor or herding work.
Very aware of Patrociño and his work, Mabel Dodge Lujan chose not include him in her book Taos And Its Artists published in 1947. The primary art narrative around Taos at that time focused on the Taos Arts Society and its collection of anglo artists. To me, much of what’s known about Patrociño is that he was utterly gifted and mostly utterly overlooked. Thanks to private collectors and some local galleries who purchased his work - his work has survived today.
His wife Remedio would often steal pieces of his from his studio to pay for groceries, she worked as a laundress at the nearby San Geronimo Lodge - hauling water for the linens from a nearby creek. Patrociño lived in Cañon with his wife. They met when her main work was as a enjaradorra or mud plasterer - traditionally a matriarchal practice. Together they were hired to work on a house in Cañon, later married and had two children, when they met she was a widow and had four of her own.
Patrociño was a notorious lover of mission wine - much of what can be read about him includes his tumultuous relationship with his wife due to his alcohol dependency and their poverty. The depression affected everyone during that time in American history, and in New Mexico it also created less work for the labor class, the mestizos, the native people, those whose land was taken by American settlers, settlement and land displacement encouraged by the American government.
Yet despite the difficult times for those like Patrociño and his family, Patrociño’s constant was his spiritual practice that transferred to his wood work. He would carve all night amidst kerosene lamps before a day of labor work. He had a modest studio below their adobe home and never stopped carving even when his eye sight faded towards the end of his life. What’s clear is that Patrociño was an artist moved by something beyond himself - his ability to transfer pieces of wood, material directly earth bound, and translate deeper messages within the wood, creating a multi-dimensional understanding between him and for the rest of the world. “The mother, the struggle, the search, the heart” a well known quote of his when describing what he tries to say in the wood.
Patriciño died in his studio around the age of 64, (his exact birthday was never known) - in a fire after falling asleep with a cigarette in hand. His wife and son woke around 3:30am to see the studio in flames.
As tragic as much of his story seems, and representative of the many mestizo & Indigenous artists of the time whose stories are unknown, or overshadowed by the Georgia O’keefe and Agnes Martin happenings of the time - none speak to me as deeply as Patrociño’s work does in capturing the true spirit of this land its people, his work is a susto, a soul pain, and a soul window into the spirit and complexities of New Mexico.
Patrociño’s only medium was red cedar, also known as rocky mountain juniper, a material endemic to this land over 2,000 years. Red cedar is the same wood Johnny uses in his pit firings when firing his micaceous clay work. Patrociño, unaware of any art scene, or cubist, or german expressionist movement that he was compared to - made santos and bultos from a need to translate his own internal and external experience. The desert southwest wasn’t a romanticized place to visit, to meet with those from Taos Pueblo for a more more spiritual understanding of oneself - but it was inherent in his life, his daily practice. Sheep herding early on created a relationship with the land that only sheep herders throughout time can have. Patrocino's father was a curandero, a healer and died in Truchas, NM.
Reflecting more on Patrociño and his life I learned that their was a disconnect between his practice and his family and communities understanding of what compelled him to work daily on something that didn’t always make him money. Remedio his wife often criticized him for working for hours alone on his studio instead of providing for the family more securely. Remedio and her family began to become superstitious of his carvings, believing they were linked to dark magic or worship due to his commitment to making them and their abstractness. Most santos of the time were more literal looking in relationship to the bible and saints. One day with his art dealer in Taos he was pulled away by a local priest, when he came back to the table with his art dealer he said the priest was asking why he didn’t make his santos more perfect, more in the perfect depiction of God. To which Patrociño replied “I’m not perfect, humans are not perfect, then why would I try to make a perfect reflection for God”
I’m reminded of this cultural distinction we have with our families and others Indigenous to this place, that the translation of how the predominantly white, over culture of the art world sees us and our work is with a knowing and understanding and support of what we do and why we do it. A genuine interest and curiosity in this place and people we are from and the ancestral knowledge we share in our work. And yet when talking to our own families there can sometimes be a distrust around it, a suspicion around the sharing, and unknowing of the worlds we walk between as they themselves do not. My friend Grace talks about this often, recently she had her uncles help her ship work to shows in San Francisco, New York, & Minneapolis, she’s been painting most of her life and professionally for years, and still her uncles and cousins will ask “are you still doing that art thing”, how was your “little art show”. I think of all of our work and its relationship to homecoming, centered around place, and how like Patriciño, the very people and spirit we’re celebrating within it are not often the ones as interested in it. And so there’s this space between us, the work we make, and those who celebrate it in worlds away from where from. In New York, and those who have second homes here. Those who moved here. Those who see it as a part of a story of this place they want to know more about, a way to enter in to this land, with context of its people. My grandma often asks why I took her name of Maida, named my project after it, a name she says gave her a hard time throughout her life as it’s difficult to pronounce.
When I started MAIDA I was still living in New York and would come home to visit, home being a place I so desperately wanted to leave when I was 18. But in my twenties I’d visit in awe of where I was from, now distanced from it - with a perspective more akin perhaps to what those visiting in the 1930’s or today see when they come to New Mexico for the first time. A land unlike any other, full of people and complex histories and practices unlike any other place in the world. Having studied art history and performance in college and graduate school - I learned about so many western artists that filled the canon of art as we know it and I wondered where my people fit in to it all.
Minimized as ‘folk art’ or primitive, I knew of ceramicists, santeros, and weavers that made work as prophetic as anything I had seen or studied. Yet, their names were not known, their histories not told.
One day I was talking with Johnny, talking about our love and reverence of the Martinez Hacienda in Taos - how it was one of our favorite places and the only place besides the space we’re fixing up on our farm, where we could imagine doing / shed dinners.
So I called a number given to us by Louisa at the gift shop of the Hacienda and called the President of the Board of the Taos Historic Museum Daniel Barela. I introduced myself, sharing my families last names, Branch, Perea - as is common to do so here, to notate family, querencia, relationship to place. He told me he grew up in Talpa and I shared about / shed project, our work together, MAIDA, and the collective of artists. We spoke of ancestry and more of querencia. I brought up Patrociño and how much I admired his work, how my lives work is the pursuit of honoring those from this place by sharing their stories and work and by living with honor and beauty in the ways our ancestors once did. Clearly overlooking the similarity in last names - Daniel humbly and casually mentioned that Patrociño was his great-grandfather and that he too was a santero, 4th generation in fact.
Daniel never knew his great-grandfather but heard countless stories and recognizes the spirit of what has been passed down to him and his work. I’ll never forget the quality of Daniels voice on the call, soft, resonant, with an ochre I would liken to a sound wood makes. No front of any kind, just real and knowing. Rightfully unsure at first of my character until some trust and understanding of intent was established. We ended the conversation with him saying he’d bring up our work to the board and was moved by what we were doing the importance of us telling our stories, and honoring our histories.
We see Daniel often now as the Martinez Hacienda is the generous host of / shed dinners currently. I’m inspired by Daniel and his dedication to the Hacienda, all volunteer his work - he recently re-did the mud floor in the only fur trapper room. In warmer months we saw him mud plastering, and recently he helped organize a film screening about land grants and mud plaster with adobera and artist Anita Rodriguez.
I feel honored to be able to share some of Daniel’s work with this ‘CON AMOR’ collection. Daniel is the first santero in the collective and I’m so excited to get to share more about him, his lineage, and another art form that is inherent to this place. What a dream to get to meet the great-grandson of an artist I so admire, and to share the spirit of both of their work through MAIDA.
Santeros have had a relationship in New Mexico since the Spanish colonized and brought physical remnants of christianity from Spain along with many other transgressions. The practice of carving saints or religious figures and moments was a common practice to decorate their churches and fill those spaces. The penitente Brotherhood, was ex-communicated by the Catholic church, dedicates its religious life to the Passion of the Christ, culminating in the reenactment of christ's crucifixion during holy week. Known for their self flagellation and self-purification practices they have had a long religious and social influence on rural areas in northern New Mexico building moradas - separate from churches the penitentes are a secretive sect that’s relationship to its communities was birthed by initial religious colonization of Indigenous communities and the baby that was made from the two. In hopes of making some sense and spiritual structure out of two cultures, previously decimated due to settlement, the brotherhood albeit smaller now, lives on.
Although Patrociño had friends in the brotherhood and they often commissioned work of his and talked with him about the bible and its allegories. Its remarkable that for Patrociño was so well versed in the old and new testament and its stories, as he was illiterate and avoided going to church. Ambivalent towards the catholic church he used its iconography as a source of inspiration and knew his spirituality and relationship to God was not beholden to place. Perhaps he felt strong in his knowing from years of shepherding alone, his unsaid understanding of the spirits within trees and in nature. Unlike traditional Santeros who focused on the perfection of santos and depiction of the perfection of God - Patrociño disagreed and pursued his own imperfection in himself and the figures he carved. His work he described was more ‘santo feeling’ than strictly santo like - and carved himself and his personal life often, distinguishing him from any other santero before. His work does not resemble any other santos made before and pieces like ‘Arguments’, ‘Everybody Has Got His Own Load’, and ‘Figure Depicting Birth’ - personal portraits as well as portraits of friends - all of these pieces exemplify his knowing and innate spiritual expression within himself. He carved allegory but was not afraid to depict his own personal experience that warranted the holy.
LINKS:
‘CON AMOR’ collection by Patrociño’s great-grandson Daniel Barela
Spirit Ascendant, The Life and Art of Patriciño Barela by Edward Gonzalez & David L. Witt