Elias Pacheco Art & Design

Elias Pacheco

Elias Pacheco is a 16-year old, local Santa Fe, NM, fourth generation artist. Elias began drawing at the age of a year and one half. He has been passionate about art ever since.

Elias has six years experience as a business owner, producing, exhibiting and selling his art. He has displayed and sold his traditional Spanish art at the annual Spanish Market in downtown Santa Fe. Elias studies his traditional Spanish artforms under Santero Lawrence Cordova, from whom he continues to learn new skills such as natural pigments and wood relief-carved panels and focuses primarily on retablos and bultos.

Starting at the age of four through current, Elias has received many art awards, recognitions and has won numerous contests as a result of his artistic talent. His work has been displayed at the New Mexico State Fair, the Albuquerque Super National Car Show and annually at Spanish Market. Elias has been featured in an Oklahoma newspaper for his artistic views on creation. He designed driveway walls for Zachary’s Homes, LLC, whose home was featured in Parade of Homes Magazine. Most recently, Elias was selected by a panel of judges as the 1st place winner of the Northern New Mexico Social Enterprise/Youth Entrepreneurship Camp, sponsored by ENLACE through a grant funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. This earned Elias a business start-up grant to further his traditional art skills and marketing plan and also resulted in him being chosen to represent New Mexico youth entrepreneurs in a global competition with 51 other international youth entrepreneurs at the ‘Ultimate Life Summit’ hosted at Disney World in Orlando, Florida where he took second place. He participated in a statewide STOMP OUT poster competition amongst private high schools, where he took first place and was recognized for his exemplary work towards helping youth say no to drugs.

In giving back to his community, Elias has served in the Civil Air Patrol and has volunteered teaching the Spanish traditional retablo art form to Pojoaque Elementary School bilingual classes.

Elias is an honor student at St. Michael’s high school where he enjoys playing on the football team. Other extracurricular activities include: hunting, fishing, riding motorcycles, and spending time with friends and family.

RETABLOS

A retablo is a painting done on a board.  It all starts off with finding the right board.  I use sugar pine boards that are older and dry (no sap), aren’t warped, and have as little knots as possible.  I then hand cut all curves and carve out any designs I want in that piece and hand sand all the edges and corners.  I use natural rabbit skin glue to make my gesso, which is a white base coat.  The rabbit skin glue must be melted, mixed with a white powder which gives it its color, and filtered 5-7 times.  Because the gesso is made from all natural ingredients, it is not very thick.  It takes about 8-10 coats of gesso to complete a board.  I also use natural pigments and watercolors.  The natural pigments are made from different objects depending on the color.  There are many different things that can be used for pigments such as flowers, bugs, nuts and many more.  In order to make the pigments, I crush and grind the object into a very fine power then mix with water.  After painting on the gessoed board, I varnish my pieces using a mixture of alcohol and piñon sap.  I collect a mixture of old sap and fresh sap.  The new sap gives the retablo a shiny sand new finish, while the old and hardened sap gives the retablo an older and aged finish.  After applying the varnish and letting it dry and harden, I wax and polish the boards.  I then drill holes in the top and in the back to attach leather strips for hanging. 

There you have it that is how I make my retablos!

- Elias Pacheco, Youth Artist and Santero