Marco Oviedo: Keeping Art Alive

Marco Oviedo has been making art since he was six years old. “Longer than I want to admit,” he says with a grin. He belongs to one of very few families that have carried on the exact same traditions for over 500 years. With noticeable pride, he showed me a photograph of a sculpture created in 1600 by his great-great-great-great-grandfather, reproduced in a museum anthology. “You see the tones of the skin on his piece?” he said. “It’s the same in my work here. The techniques have been preserved, passed down through our family.”

“The scary part for me,” he added with obvious concern, “is that nobody wants to learn them these days. My kids aren’t interested, so I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Marco remains one of the vanishingly rare santeros (saint-makers) left in the world keeping an exacting, grueling Baroque tradition alive.

On the day we met, he invited me into his carving studio—an honor that surprised his wife, Pat. The space was surprisingly humble: an intimate work table tucked into a bedroom nook, framed by wooden shelves he had built himself.

While Marco carves traditional New Mexican bultos that are simple and elegant, his primary commitment remains the elaborate method of his ancestors. “The originals or masters of these pieces—the foundational wood sculpture that serves as the heart of the entire artistic process—take me years to carve,” he said, holding a delicate figure in his hands. “I’ve spent two and a half years on this Guadalupe already, and she’s far from finished.”

Those years are required because he hand-chisels dense wood with microscopic precision. In the traditional Baroque method, the finished carving must be flawless. Because subsequent paint layers are translucent, any minor error, nick, or uneven plane in the grain will be magnified rather than hidden.

Looking up from his workbench, he smiled. “I put my own face on the San Franciscos. I am looking for a little salvation.”

He turned serious again as he discussed the fragility of this knowledge. “It’s almost impossible to preserve these processes. Look at this luminous skin—to polish it, I use the bladder of an ox, and you need to know how to prepare the bladder, how to preserve it. And this is a special paint I make, too. It is a family secret.”

Even raw timber is hard to come by. “Most commercial wood is fast-grown now, but what you need for this work is timber that won’t crack—something strong in its core and not green, wood that grew slowly over centuries. I use only increasingly rare old-growth trees.” Once secured, the timber requires seven to eight years of seasoning just to dry correctly. In recent years, several institutions, including the Smithsonian, have put out calls to locate suitable historic wood to keep Marco supplied. 

Marco’s life centers entirely on keeping this craft breathing. He works through the night and sleeps by day, preferring the uninterrupted silence when the rest of the world is asleep and there are no phones ringing. “In the Middle Ages they used to say working is praying, and that’s what I am doing.”

During the European guild eras, religious masterpieces were never executed by a single hand. Teams of specialized apprentices worked in stages: some carved the rough timber, others prepared surfaces to receive pigment, while master gilders applied gold leaf and specialty glazes. Marco executes every single step alone.

“First you start with the wood figure that has taken years to carve,” he explained. “Then you apply animal glue—many coats, usually seven or more, sanding in between.” For sandpaper, he uses brown paper grocery bags. “Then come six to seven coats of gesso, a proprietary mixture I make myself, sanded after every single coat. You are preparing the canvas of your piece, making it ready for color.”

Next, every surface intended for gold leaf or flesh tones is coated in bol, a fine, purplish-red liquid clay. He paints on multiple layers, polishing between each until the wood feels like glazed porcelain.

To apply gilding, he uses the traditional estofado method, laying sheets of genuine 23-karat gold leaf over the clay foundation. The gold is then completely coated in custom oil paint mixed from ancestral formulas. Once the surface dries, the hallmark of the technique begins: using a fine stylus, Marco delicately scratches through the paint layer by hand. By selectively removing pigment, he reveals intricate patterns of gleaming gold leaf hidden beneath.

For flesh tones, he turns to encarnado, the historic practice of bringing wood to life. Many very thin layers of translucent pigments and oils are painted over the polished white gesso and clay base. Because the ground layers are satiny and reflective, light passes through the glaze, strikes the white substrate, and bounces back out. The result is a lifelike, luminous human skin quality that resists fading across centuries.

Alongside his woodcarving, Marco is an accomplished bronze founder—a modern divergence from his ancestral craft. He developed a foundry method that allows his cast bronzes to capture every delicate cut of his original carvings.

His painstakingly hand-chiseled figures serve a dual purpose as “masters.” Once the raw wooden sculpture is finished—before any gesso or gilding is applied—he uses it to create a rigid “mother mold.” Because carving a master takes years, bronze casting allows the form to be shared through limited editions without compromising the original wood.

The process is as intricate as it is physically demanding. Marco coats the bare wooden carving with liquid silicone rubber to capture every cut and plane. Over this flexible sleeve, he builds a rigid outer shell of heavy plaster. Once set, he unbolts the plaster shell, peels back the silicone, and frees the wooden original unharmed.

Inside the flexible silicone skin, he pours molten wax, sloshing it repeatedly to coat the interior and create a hollow wax replica.

Marco grinned when explaining the next phase, comparing heavy industrial metallurgy to a kitchen chore: “It’s like coating a drumstick with egg and then dipping it in crumbs.”

He was describing the ceramic slurry—a milky liquid silica suspension he calls “slur.” He plunges the wax replica into the vat, dusts it with fine refractory sand, and lets it cure. Because the mold must withstand liquid metal at thousands of degrees, a single dip is insufficient. For nearly two weeks, Marco repeats this ritual a dozen times, building a dense, rock-hard ceramic jacket capable of holding molten fire.

After the mold is completed, the original master carving returns to his carving table, where he spends months applying gesso, bol, gold leaf, and oil paints, culminating in a single, priceless wooden santo.

The final stage before pouring is the “burnout.” Marco places the heavy ceramic shell upside down in a roaring kiln. The wax melts and drains away—the ancient “lost-wax” principle—leaving a hollow ceramic negative.

He then melts bronze ingots until they liquefy and pours the glowing metal directly into the preheated shell. Handling this safely requires massive, high-caliber machinery—which stood in stark contrast to the foundry itself–which stood in striking contrast to the foundry itself. Perched precariously over a steep arroyo on his Chimayó property, the workshop felt rickety to me. It was clear Marco’s attention and capital were concentrated on the precision of his kilns and casting gear rather than the structural integrity of the building itself. Standing inside, I remember wondering if the whole structure might slide down the hillside. Marco remained entirely unbothered.

Once the bronze cools, he shatters the ceramic shell with a hammer, revealing the raw metal casting within.

Marco’s artistic self-assurance was forged in an uncommon childhood. “I had the huge privilege to be raised by my aunt on my father’s side,” he told me. She ran a prominent art gallery in Mexico City and had studied alongside Pablo Picasso, who spent time with their family. Marco remembers watching Picasso assemble a sculpture out of tricycle parts—an act that horrified young Marco, who owned a beloved trike of his own. Living in Coyoacán, they were neighbors with Frida Kahlo and saw her frequently. Later journeys brought visits to Andy Warhol in New York and an invitation into Joan Miró’s studio in Spain.

Immersed in that milieu, Marco carries the aura of an old-world maestro. He spoke openly about being collected by major institutions and private figures like Robert Redford, Goldie Hawn, and Oprah Winfrey. For him, naming high-profile patrons is simply the standard dialect of professional art.

Yet that overt self-assurance may well serve as armor against a deeper dread: the quiet anxiety of standing at the terminus of a 500-year family line, uncertain whether his children will take up the chisel. When an artist senses their tradition is on the verge of disappearing, raising their voice can be a way to keep time from swallowing their life’s work.

Strip away the pedigree and the prominent names, and what remains is an artisan completely devoted to his family’s inheritance. It radiated through his posture whenever he demonstrated a delicate step or mentioned a centuries-old formula.

His true ambition is straightforward: that the knowledge carried across five centuries will survive—if not through an apprentice’s hands, then through the silent endurance of the wood and bronze he leaves behind.

Love to you all,

Jeane

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