Craftsmanship
into small wooden boxes. In the center of the massive triangular candle holder is a little box that shows the entombment of Christ. Santistevan included intricate details such as small flower designs, a box that holds the matches to light the candles and another used to snuff them out.
The sculpture was carved from pine and aspen and took roughly six to nine months to complete.
“It was a stunning piece that blew away the judges with its craftsmanship,” said event organizer Jana Gottshalk. “It was definitely a favorite among the judges. … It was a pretty quick decision.”
Santistevan said he became interested in tenebrae after the brothers from a little chapel in San Francisco, Colo., asked him to carve a pair of angels for a new tenebrae after the previous one was stolen.
“So they they asked me if I would do that and I said, ‘Sure, I’d love to do it. I’d do it for free,’ “Santistevan said.
That experience and his Catholic faith inspired him to carve a wooden tenebrae for this year’s Traditional Spanish Market.
Santistevan was born and raised in Denver, and was the first person from the state to start participating in the market 45 years ago. He received the Masters Awards for Lifetime Achievement in 2002.
Over the years, he has brought bultos, hide painting, retablos, woodcarvings, bone carvings and handmade furniture to the market.
Santistevan started woodcarving early in life. He was just 5 or 6 years old when his father took him on a hike and showed him the small roads and train tracks that he had carved into a boulder years before.
When Santistevan’s father was a small child, he was a sheepherder. At just 6 years old, his father used these carvings and small rocks to entertain himself when he was out herding sheep.
Santistevan said he was so impressed, he took his mother’s paring knife and started carving toy guns out of sticks he found outside.
“My mother said, ‘Don’t be taking paring knives; you’re making them dull, and you’re going to cut yourself,’ “he said. “Sure enough I did cut myself. I have a scar still there, but I kept on carving.”
Santistevan said he lost interest in carving when he was 10 or 11 and set the hobby aside for years.
Throughout his early life, people underestimated Santistevan’s intelligence. He went to seminary in his teens but was told he wasn’t bright enough to become a priest and was kicked out. When he went to Cathedral High School in Denver, a counselor told him he wasn’t fit to go to college and advised he learn a trade instead.
This prompted Santistevan to start taking classes at night school when he was just a sophomore in high school.
“I would go to learn how to become a body and fender man,” Santistevan said. “I started to do metal sculptures, and in the process, that started me on my quest as an artist.”
The first pieces he make out of metal were the head of Christ and a crucifix.
By the late ’60s, Santistevan founded what is considered to be one of the first Chicano art galleries in the U.S., El Grito, with the help of the civil rights organization Crusade for Justice.
“I opened up this art gallery trying to get other Chicanos recognized as artists because nobody ever saw us as artists,” he said.
His gallery eventually led him to get in touch with a Denver Post reporter who told him about Freschi, his ancestor.
“It just so happens that my paternal grandmother was a Freschi,” Santistevan said.
Santistevan said his mother eventually convinced him to go to college when he was 32.
“I say, ‘Mom, of all your children, you pick the dumbest one,’ ” he said. “‘You know they’ve told me I’m not college material,’ and I believed them, but she was insistent that I should go to college.”
He ended graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in administrative education. Even though he now had the chance to start a new career, Santistevan still wanted to be an artist.
And he has passed down his love for traditional Hispanic art to his children. He said he took his daughter, Brigida Santistevan, to her first Traditional Spanish Market when she was 5 years old, nearly the same age when he began carving.
She went on to earn a scholarship from the Spanish Colonial Art Society and studied under the late Jimmy Trujillo — a master straw appliqué artist.
Santistevan’s son, Carlos Santistevan Jr., went to his first market when he was 6 and now presents his hide paintings alongside his father.
“I’m very proud of them that they have achieved,” the elder Santistevan said.