Patrociño Barela: I Stand On My Own Feet

In a 1956 interview with Lenore G. Marshall for Arts Magazine, Barela shared additional information about his early life and how he got his start with woodcarving: “My daddy he sent me to watch goats in the hills. I go here, there, nine years, dig potatoes, coal mines, work in WPA, haul dirt, ate breakfast, went out. One day the priest showed me old figure of Saint Angelo, broken, he say, ‘Pat you think could be fix?’ I say, ‘Padre, we can try.’ We work all night and fix. That santo was done in joints, pieces put in with pipe. I came home and lay on bed and think how you can make it so it is in one piece. All one. I can not sleep all night. Next day after work I eat supper quick, go out where I got pieces of wood. I choose some with no knots, and I begin with pocket knife. My wife call, you no going to sleep? I no answer her.” 

In a close-looking guide accompanying the display of one of Barela’s sculptures, the Ackland Art Museum explains “Santos are traditional representations of saints or other religious figures usually through wood carvings in the round (bultos)… Barela himself was a self-taught maker of santos. This tradition was brought to the American Southwest by Spanish colonists of the seventeenth century.” Traditionally, bultos are made by joining together multiple pieces of wood that are carved individually and are then painted once assembled. Each of Barela’s bultos are one solid carved piece of wood, such as cedar. Not using paint, most of his sculptures showcase the natural color of the chosen wood as well as any other unique features such as knots. Patrociño Barela’s sculptures are “in the round,” meaning that viewers can only gain an understanding of an object’s full significance by seeing it from multiple angles. 

Barela moved back to the Taos area in 1930. For a short period of time, Barela used his horses and wagon to haul dirt and supplies and other services for the Depression era Federal Emergency Relief Administration before he was offered a unique, albeit lower paid opportunity to pursue his art with the WPA’s Federal Art Program (FAP). Ruth Fish was the first WPA official to recognize Barela’s artistic potential and his good fit with the ethos of the FAP initiative, but it was ultimately Russell Vernon Hunter who made the artist’s participation in the project possible. On October 30, 1935, Hunter was appointed the Director of the New Mexico division of the FAP and he remained in that position for the entire duration of the program until it was discontinued in 1943. Aside from general WPA affiliation, the Roswell Museum and Barela also share direct connections to Hunter. After the end of the WPA, Hunter would later become the Director of the Roswell Museum. In Spirit Ascendant Gonzales and Witt wrote “To introduce the novel concept of government support for the arts, the best Federal Art Project artists were shown at the Museum of Modern Art. Of the thousands employed, 171 artists were selected with 400 works for the museum show. Barela, represented with eight carvings, had more pieces in the show than anyone else.” As a result, Barela’s name and overwhelmingly positive reviews of his work were published in national and regional publications coast-to-coast. “The overwhelming praise for Barela,” Padilla explains, “prompted inquiries to [Russell] Vernon Hunter and Holger Cahill, the national director of the Federal Art Project, from commercial art galleries in New York interested in showing the artist’s work. Because Hunter feared that big city business dealings would intimidate Barela, quashing his artistic integrity and creative spontaneity, he discouraged Cahill against such a move; Cahill agreed. Barela apparently was never apprised of the New York offer, and he was never to be presented with such an opportunity again.” Instead of “protecting” him as they supposedly intended, Barela’s white WPA supporters effectively stole from him any opportunity to support himself financially from his artistic practice in the future. Without financial opportunities to sell his sculptures, Barela returned to itinerant employment to support his family, often away from home, for a period of twelve years. This made it difficult for the artist to devote time to his artistic expression through wood carving.