New Mexico

Hispanic arts & crafts: bultos, colcha embroidery, pano art, retablos, santos, silverwork, tinwork, weaving, woodworking

Bultos

These brightly colored sculptures of saints or other religious figures are covered 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.

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