ABQ artist’s sconces, luminarias and ornaments will be at Winter Spanish Market
ABQ artist’s sconces, luminarias and ornaments at Winter Spanish Market
Kevin Burgess-Chavez had been showing his work for years before learning he was descended from Spanish colonial art royalty.
The Albuquerque tin artist is a descendant of Bernard Miera y Pacheco, the artist and cartographer credited with launching the retablo movement in New Mexico in the 1700s.
“He was my great-grandfather seven times removed,” Burgess-Chavez said. “I was a little shocked. Art is in my blood.”
The multiple award-winning artist will be bringing his ornaments, luminarias, mirrors, sconces and more to the Winter Spanish Market next weekend at Old Town’s Hotel Albuquerque. Visitors can browse through santos, tinwork, straw appliqué, weaving, pottery, precious metal, colcha embroidery, bone carving, furniture, woodcarving and utilitarian objects.
Organizers are expecting more than 124 artists at the market. About 100 artists sold their work at last year’s Albuquerque debut. The show had been located in Santa Fe for 24 years. About 6,000 people attended the event.
An Albuquerque native, BurgessChavez works from a 15- by 20-foot space in a converted horse barn in the South Valley. Rows and rows of hammers, mallets, pliers and scissors dangle from a wall like icicles, while storage bins climb to the ceiling of another. A space heater glows away the autumn chill.
Twenty-five years ago, BurgessChavez made art from found objects good enough to be sold in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s gift shop. Today he sells that work at Santa Fe’s recycled art show.
“As a child, I always walked with my head down, so I would come home with stuff in my pockets,” he said. “I took just about every art class that was offered in school.”
Raised largely in Europe in a military family, he finished his studies at Highland High School.
Seventeen years ago, he decided to focus on a single medium, so he turned to Spanish colonial art.
But he could find no one willing to share techniques with him. He learned to cut, fold and stamp tin by reading books. Like his predecessors, he crafted his own tools, particularly the stamps that add specific shapes to the flat metal. He once carved a bolt into a starburst.
“That’s how you can tell about the tinwork,” he said. “It’s the tools. Everybody made their own tools, so
it’s like fingerprints.”
Over the holidays, collectors clamor for his Christmas ornaments shaped into animals and holiday motifs that sell for $10-$19. He makes everything from doves, roadrunners, horses, stilettos, acorns, angels, bears, cats, Santas, stars and stockings to Christmas trees.
He declines to make one overly familiar pueblo image.
“I’m so tired of Kokopelli,” he said with a sigh, adding, “My best mistake I ever made was a flying pig.”
A customer from Chicago ordered a cache of nightlights, including lights shaped like Big Ben, a pig and an angel. BurgessChavez misunderstood the latter part of the order and produced an angel pig. It’s his biggest seller.
“Cat people are easy because they like anything with a cat,” he added. “Dog people want a specific breed.”
Today he’s churning out 70 luminarias for a Taos gallery.
He keeps templates, complete with dimensions and hole punches and notches to guide him.
Chandeliers can be challenging because of the design complexity. Last year, he produced a cross between straw appliqué and tin by inlaying his crosses and mirrors with brass and copper designs.
Last winter also marked the controversial debut of Winter Market in Albuquerque after more than two decades in Santa Fe. Some northern New Mexico artists boycotted the move; Burgess-Chavez decided to give it a try because most of his collectors are in Albuquerque. The site change boosted his sales by 25 percent.
“That was a huge thing,” he said. “A lot of artists were very upset. I was kind of split. It was one of the best Winter Markets for me and for a lot of other artists. I know a lot of people who didn’t do it last year are doing it this year.”