The Spanish Market

Have you ever heard of bultos? The artist in this photograph poses with his bultos, -- brightly colored sculptures of saints or other religious figures. This artist is called an ultossantero (saint-maker) and is one of many at the Spanish Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In 1926, the Spanish Colonial Arts Society started the Spanish Market for Hispanic artists to show and sell their traditional handmade objects. The Society began the Market to preserve and celebrate the Hispanic culture of New Mexico.

The artists of the Spanish Market work with many different kinds of materials. Some weave cloth on looms or punch designs into tin. Others make their own pottery or carve objects out of bone. The artist in this photograph poses with his bultos, which are brightly colored sculptures of saints or other religious figures. Local artists, called santeros (saint-makers), have carved and painted bultos for the past few hundred years. 

Today, they still carve the figures from the wood of trees that grow in New Mexico: cottonwood, cottonwood roots, aspen and pine. A santero carves a bulto with a knife and then covers it with gesso, a kind of paste, to prepare it for painting. Santeros still use paints from homemade pigments. 

For example, charcoal is used to make black paint. After a santero has finished painting, he applies a varnish to protect the bulto.

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