Hot stuff: Jes Márquez commemorates Zozobra's 100th anniversary with custom-made cowboy boots

Villanueva —

Jes Márquez turned the cowboy boot over in her hands, pointing out the inlay details — an animal skull, a yucca plant, a mission church.

It’s a mostly orange boot, green at its pointy toe and New Mexico sky blue at its very top.

Márquez made it. And, except for its mate, there is no other like it.

Hot stuff: Jes Márquez commemorates Zozobra's 100th anniversary with custom-made cowboy boots

“I want to make a boot no one else has ever made,” Márquez said. “I want to do boots that surprise people, boots that make people say, ‘I want that.’ ”

She calls these particular boots “El Camino Real,” after the historic road between Mexico City and Santa Fe, because she likes a little history in her boots.

“I think of boots as a tapestry,” she said. “I think boots are the physical version of storytelling. I want my boots to have a title.”

Like “Zozobra 100,” a pair of boots she recently made to commemorate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the burning of Old Man Gloom, along with people’s worries and troubles, on Friday, Aug. 30, at Santa Fe’s Fort Marcy Park.

This pair sports black shafts over red and blue lower portions and decorative patterns depicting Zozobra, a fire dancer and fireworks.

Márquez has some personal history in her Zozobra boots. She and her husband, Chris, have fond memories of walking to the Zozobra burning when they lived in Santa Fe.

“It’s always such a fun experience to go to Zozobra and write down your woes or gloom of the day, or the year or a lifetime.”

Turn the pageMárquez’s “Zozobra 100” boots will be on display as part of “Zozobra Y La Conquistadora,” an exhibit opening Friday, Aug. 23, and running through Dec. 1 at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe.

That’s something to hang your hat on, especially considering that Márquez, 42, has been making boots “from scratch” for just seven years.

A native of Texas, she grew up in New Mexico and has lived in Santa Fe, Eldorado, Albuquerque and even, for a time, in South Africa. But four years ago, she and Chris moved into an old adobe house in Villanueva, a village of 480 people in San Miquel County, 35 driving miles southwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico.

“There’s an interesting mix of people here,” she said. “We have a library and a farmers market.” There’s a community well, too.

The house, a renovation project in progress, is more than 100 years old. A stone on the property is marked with the date 1911.

“It’s one of those houses everybody’s grandmother has lived in,” Marquez said. “It was a great landing spot out here for us. It’s as New Mexico as it could get.”

Today, the house’s interior is filled with Hispanic folk art inherited from Chris’ mother, Márquez’s boot making machines and tools and four dogs. During my visit there recently, Márquez, without pausing her conversation, moved across the room to make sure Lily, a 20-year-old Chihuahua, did not fall off a couch.

“I had a pet-sitting business in Santa Fe,” she said. “I’ve been in every house in the Santa Fe area.” She has also produced greeting cards and done location work for the film industry.

During a year in South Africa, she worked in wildlife rehabilitation and advertising.

“I was preparing meals for mongooses, birds and monitor lizards and then riding a bicycle to an ad agency and hoping something would work out,” she said.

Márquez is a writer, too. Her 2019 book “Utilities Nearby” is a guide to living off grid in Santa Fe, Taos and others parts of northern New Mexico.

It was a book, 2008’s “Cowboy Boots,” by author Tyler Beard and photographer Jim Arndt, that turned a page in Márquez’s life.

Fire in the belly

“Cowboy Boots” takes a close look at spectacular boot designs and prominent bootmakers. It inspired Márquez to explore that world.

In 2016, she walked into Roberto Robledo’s Boot and Shoe Repair shop in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill.

“I just kept going back,” she said. “Roberto has been making boots for 50 years, and I was with him for seven years. I didn’t even know how to sew when I started. I got on one machine at a time. I learned how to sharpen a knife. I learned how to use a knife. It was not really a (boot making) course. I learned by osmosis.”

She said boot making is really construction.

“This is how it starts. You draw a pattern,” Márquez said. “The design comes next, but you are really building the boot. I don’t do this in an easy-breezy way. You can’t skip steps. You don’t Jackson Pollock it.”

Recently, Márquez was able to work with master bootmaker Deana McGuffin of Albuquerque’s South Valley by way of a grant through the New Mexico Arts Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program.

“How romanticized is the idea of learning a skill one-on-one by being mentored,” Márquez said. “I’m glad I got to work with Deana after I worked with Roberto because I knew good questions to ask. Deana has been an angel to me, a guide.

“I added to my repertoire of boot making. I refined some things and learned other methods. There is a lot of work hidden in making boots.”

McGuffin is a third-generation New Mexico bootmaker who has taught the craft to 55 students. She said she had a lot of fun working with Márquez.

“Jes is quite talented and very intrepid,” McGuffin said. “She is not afraid of jumping in and trying anything. She is an incredible patternmaker. She’s definitely got the fire in the belly for making boots. I don’t think she is going to stop now.”

A quiet life

It’s not difficult to get Márquez talking. Just say hello and step back.

But she said boot making is a quiet world. If you watch her at work on a stitching machine, you’ll see another Márquez, someone silent and absorbed.

“You work by yourself a lot,” she said. “It’s three days in the same sweatpants with your dog. Sometimes you make your own modified tool because you just can’t go down to Home Depot and get these things.”

Márquez said making boots is like a roller coaster ride.

“Parts of boot making is ‘I got this,’ and other parts are ‘uhhhh,’ ” she said. “Sole stitching is difficult.”

Márquez has a machine that will stitch in less than a minute something it would take two hours to do by hand.

“But you had better know what you are doing,” she said. “This is a sewing machine on steroids. Such a beast.”

Márquez does not work with exotic skins — ostrich, stingray, shark, caiman, kangaroo — preferring to work with the hides of animals a cowboy might actually encounter.

These days, she usually has three pairs of boots in the works at one time.

“I tell people six months from when I start,” she said. “I would like to get to where I do a pair a month. But because of the craftsmanship involved, I don’t want to do this on a writer’s deadline.”

Her boots range from a base price of $3,000 up to $5,000.

“Cowboy boots are the Cadillac of footwear,” she said. And boots as distinctive as Márquez makes become a part of the person who wears them, “like a tattoo you can remove.”