An Interesting Afternoon

The Fort Restaurant near Morrison was built in 1961 to resemble Bent's Fort. Bent's Fort is the historic 1883 in South Eastern Colorado. Every year, the Fort near Morrison Colorado sponsors an 1830 Rendezvous and Spanish Colonial Art Market. I try to go every year
because I love looking at the latest work that the Santeros are doing. A Santero or Santera is a wood carver who uses only natural products to make and to paint their work. The figure can be a bulto (doll-like) or on a screen or wood.

This year there were other art mediums. One piece of work was the feather painting. The lady painted outstanding pictures on feathers. She also won first prize for one of her works of a bear.  When I first saw it I thought it was a painting on canvas until I looked closer and saw the feathers. Very original and beautiful work.

I spoke with some of the artists and took some pictures of them and or their art.
The artists are friendly and love to explain their work. One artist is my friend on Facebook so I stopped to introduce myself. He laughed and said, "In the past six years I have not even looked at my Facebook page." When his wife saw my puzzled looked, she added, "His daughter is the one who posts and replies. He does not have time because he is either working on his art or reading about new works being introduced to the Santero art."  She told me she is also an artist and works on pottery. He took first prize on his Lady of Guadalupe.

The straw art seemed to be the most tedious because the art is with narrow strips of straw. Jimmy Trujillo is from Albuquerque, New Mexico and he explained his art as he worked. After twenty minutes he was still working with one small piece of straw. The finished product is beautiful but a small cross, and the least expensive, was $85. I saw some crosses for $500.

Al Florence, Art of Lakewood, Colorado, had an interesting booth with Christ on the Cross, Christ being condemned, and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our Lady was popular this year and seemed to have won some blue ribbons!

After looking at all the Hispanic art which not only had the wooden objects but I saw some tin works and a jewelry booth. I noticed that jewelry is becoming more modern and there weren't many turquoise pieces.

The next blog will be the Mountain men and how they brought the 1800's to life.