‘A TOY PARADISE’
Man shares growing collection of Cordova wood chip carvings at museum
Growing up in Santa Fe, Glynn Gomez first felt his sense of wonder for Cordova wood chip carvings when his mother took him to lunch with her at La Posada de Santa Fe.
At 5 or 6 years old, it wasn’t the most exciting pastime he could imagine — until she took him to the hotel’s gift shop and he saw tiers of wood carvings on display, including sheep, horses, burros and countless other animals.
“I thought it was a toy paradise,” Gomez said during a November lecture at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. “I was completely overwhelmed.”
His early enchantment with the unpainted wood carvings has culminated in a Nativity scene on display at the museum through Feb. 28.
Or maybe culminated isn’t the right word — Gomez said he still is interested in adding to his collection (somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pieces) and the display, which he used to set up in his home, where he hosted open houses for friends and contributing artists to stop by and view it.
And the exhibit, titled “Starry Night,” encompasses far more than a simple scene of the Holy Family, and some shepherds and magi. Small birds perch in trees and fly off into the sky under a silver star. Upright rabbits holding a drum, guitars and a flute parade toward the stable. Burros hold stacks of firewood and nibble on hay while squirrels scamper past them. Chickens roost on eggs, pigs snuffle in the background and dogs jump for attention from humans. Three crowned angels lead bears on leashes, while others look down on the scene from above.
Sections of background are painted blue, with stars sprinkled throughout.
“He (Gomez) has created a whole story line for it,” said Robin Farwell Gavin, chief curator at the museum. “There is a very specific reason each figure is in its place ... .
“Clearly it’s a labor of love.”
Nativity tableaus have a long history in Spain, as well as Italy. “This is kind of in that genre,” she said. “It’s an interesting New Mexican interpretation.”
The carved wood chip art form had its beginnings early in the 20th century in Cordova in northern New Mexico, she added, and has spread a little from there, although it is still rooted with families in that small village.
While he loved the carvings early in life, Gomez said his collection didn’t start until after he had launched his career in architectural design, traveled the world, then settled back in Santa Fe. One particularly cold day, friends took him to Mass at Christ in the Desert Monastery near Abiquiu, traveling the barely-a-cowpath road in a classic Volkwagen van whose heater didn’t work.
Sitting in a small chapter house afterward, sipping hot chocolate in a room smoky from a small fire, Gomez said he saw a ray of sunlight shooting onto a table in the corner.
There he saw, once again, those Cordova wood chip carvings: rabbits, bears, foxes, squirrels and the three principal figures, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
He then said to himself those words that mark a future collector: “I’ve got to have it!”
He bought the Holy Family figures, set them up under a small piñon tree in his home and had “one of the best Christmases in a long time,” Gomez said.
Then he thought, “Why not a burro? A cow? Sheep? A couple of sheep?” A few years later, the Nativity scene took up all the space under the tree. A few more years and it was well on its way to surrounding his house, he said.
Gomez said he attended Spanish Market each year to launch his serious collecting, getting to know the artists and their work. After a while, though, he noticed the pieces were kind of repetitive and wondered if the artists would make items specifically for his Nativity, in scale to what he already had.
One day, he said, he happened by the studio of Ben Ortega, whom he calls one of the masters of wood carving, in Tesuque and wandered in with his proposal. Not long later, Ortega presented him with a little tree to fit into his scene. “That was about 40 years ago,” Gomez said, noting that Ortega no longer is living.
“The crudeness of the exhibit, to me, has a childlike quality,” Gomez said. In a way, the exhibit is like a story you would read to children on a cold night, he said. “To me, it looks a great deal like a stage set, something you might see in a children’s room, that might come out of the playbox.”
When the time came that he thought about sharing his collection with more people, the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art offered him the chance to do that. It is currently on loan and will return to Gomez when the exhibition closes.