'In my blood': Santero Nicholas Herrera weaves Catholic devotion with car culture

Editor’s note: The Journal continues the once-a-month series “From the Studio” with Assistant Arts Editor Kathaleen Roberts, as she takes an up-close look at an artist.

Contemporary santero Nicholas Herrera mixes car parts with paint, wood and memories to create art steeped in northern New Mexico.

Open at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos through June 1, 2025, “Nicholas Herrera: El Rito Santero” is a glimpse into the life and works of this master santero.

'In my blood': Santero Nicholas Herrera weaves Catholic devotion with car culture

He started carving when he was 12 years old.

“It was just kind of cool to take a piece of wood and carve it like Pinocchio,” he said.

“I used to carve snakes and little pigs and little birds,” Herrera continued. “I used to carve little boats and watch them go down the river. Even when I was in church, I used to carve the pews,” he added with a laugh.

Born and raised in El Rito, Herrera is a folk artist whose family was among the earliest settlers in the region. Claiming Spanish, Native American and Mexican ancestry, Herrera identifies as mestizo and descends from farmers and outlaws, landowners and soldiers, craftsmen and artists. He grew up around the Spanish traditions of northern New Mexico and came of age with a fast-paced lifestyle that landed him in both the hospital and jail at the age of 26. After awakening in the hospital and recovering from a coma, Herrera felt called to become a saint maker.

“I was doing a lot of crazy s---,” he said. “I had broken bones and I almost lost an eye. I ended up going to jail for being a drunk driver. It gave me time to think.”

“La Batalla” depicts his fight back to life when he slammed into a truck in a drunken stupor.

But Herrera’s jailers liked his sketches and he traded them for cigarettes. One of them was married to a curator at the Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos. She offered Herrera a solo show and a career was born.

“It was a do-or-die thing,” he said.

As a modern santero, Herrera creates bultos, retablos and large-scale mixed-media works, many of which detail rich and often challenging chapters in his colorful life.

Still a “village artist,” Herrera continues to live and create on the land of his family. They settled in northern New Mexico six generations ago. His relatives were among the early settlers who came with Juan de Oñate in 1598.

Herrera has always created art, weaving his Catholic devotion with car culture. He once rescued a 1939 Chevy Coupe from an arroyo and painted the vehicle with religious imagery from bumper to bumper. It was his “Lowrider Shrine.”

“I collect junk,” he said. “I just go to my junk pile.”

Today he specializes in recycled art, as well as paintings of his beloved El Rito, with its village, trucks and church.

He created “Altar Dedicado a Mi Hermano” in honor of his brother Patrick.

“He was my oldest brother,” Herrera said, “and he was in a real bad accident five years ago. He was a big supporter of my art.”

“SPMDTU,” (Society for the Mutual Protection of Workers, 2014), depicts one of the old dance halls that dotted New Mexico before the advent of casinos. “San Isidro” (2016) captures the traditional saint with angels in a bucolic El Rito background.

“The traditional San Isidro was always alone,” Herrera said. “It’s a flashback to me, my Mom and my Dad. We’ve owned our farm for six generations. We have horses, goats, chickens, cats and dogs.”

“El Rito Santero” shows Herrera holding his own carving of the Virgin of Guadalupe next to his green truck. He inherited the 1931 Ford from a cousin.

“I restored it,” Herrera said. “I put it on top of a ’78 Ford Bronco. It was part of the history of my family.”

Herrera’s great-great uncle, José Inéz Herrera was known as the saint maker of the angel of death.

“I just heard about him,” Herrera said. “A Denver Art Museum curator brought me pictures of my uncle’s work. It’s the angel of death on the death cart with the bow and arrow and sheep’s teeth. I went, ‘Oh, it must be in my blood!’”

He paints on hand-carved wood with natural pigments or acrylics.

Herrera’s mother cleaned the houses of local artists, who often handed him paper and crayons. Undiagnosed dyslexia prevented him from academics. His folk style paintings of El Rito reveal a rustic and pastoral life of friendly neighbors, frolicking animals, trucks and fiestas.

Herrera boasts two pieces in the Smithsonian. One is a wood sculpture named “Protect and Serve,” planting Jesus in the back of a police car.