SUN Staff Report
6/18/09
A piece of early Spanish-colonial religious art will visit Española Friday when a celebrated corn-stalk Christ is put on display at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
“It’s absolutely very breathtakingly real,” ethnohistorian and artist Charlie Carrillo said. “It was fashioned by experts — master saintmakers in Mexico — and so it’s just a very, very beautiful lifesize Cristo.”
The crucifix will be on display during the 5:30 p.m. Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, which is located on North Coronado Avenue at Calle Rosario.
The lifesize Christ figure was likely constructed in Mexico during the late 17th or early 18th century using the pasta de caña method, in which the spongy core of a corn stalk is shaped into a figure and then held in place with an orchid-flower paste, Carrillo said. Pasta de caña sculptures were typically covered in fabric or paper and then covered with a gesso coating, he said.
Carrillo said he was contacted by the Cristo’s owners, Gene and Inez Lovato, after they found the damaged sculpture in a barn in eastern New Mexico in 2008. He recommended Taos artist Victor Goler for the necessary restoration work.