"Lowrider Nativity" (2005) depicts the Holy Family and the Magi on lowrider choppers. Photograph by Brad Trone, courtesy of Curt and Christina Nonomaque.
NICHOLAS HERRERA didn’t growup in the small northern New Mexico community of El Rito intending to be an artist. But to say that art became his calling is an understatement. After a near-fatal car accident in 1990, the trajectory of his life changed forever.
When Herrera was a child, his mother, Celia, cleaned houses for local artists. Her work often afforded her son, who would accompany her, opportunities to score drawing paper and used brushes and paint. El Rito, one of the earliest Spanish settlements north of Santa Fe, wasn’t a place where kids could learn much about art. Extracurricular activities were mostly centered on sports.
By the time he was in his early twenties, Herrera had fallen into a lifestyle marked by guns, drugs, and alcohol. He did several stints behind bars, ranging from one night to six months, for offenses including drunk driving and carrying a concealed weapon.
One winter night, after drinking too much, he accidentally drove his Yugo into an oncoming truck. The crash left him unconscious on the side of the road with a concussion, back injuries, and broken ribs.
In "La Batalla" (2020), the figure of the artist fights for his life.
Photograph by James Hart Photography, courtesy of Tia Collection.
“If I die now, I’d like to die sober and not show up to St. Peter all hung over,” he says, reflecting on how far he’s come. “At the time, it was the best thing to have happened to me. It changed my life. I was reborn.”
While recovering at the hospital, Herrera experienced visions of Christ fighting over his body with the figure of La Muerte (Death)—only La Muerte appeared to him in the form of a wood carving by his uncle, celebrated santero José Inés Herrera. Upon his release two weeks later, he learned that if a mysterious bystander had not come to his aid at the scene of the accident, he might have died.
“He was lying in a snowy bank on the side of the road and he saw a hitchhiker, a hippie—who he also says could have been Jesus,” says Nicole Dial-Kay, curator at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos. “He was rescued by this guy who called the cops and then disappeared.”
Dial-Kay curated Herrera’s current exhibition, Nicholas Herrera: El Rito Santero, on view through June 1, which is a particular matter of pride for Herrera. He’s been an exhibiting artist since the 1990s—in group and solo gallery exhibitions, as well as at Santa Fe’s annual Traditional Spanish Market—and has been widely collected with work in major institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution. He received a 2006 National Award of Distinction from the National Folk Art Society of America and won a 2016 New Mexico Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts. But despite that résumé, this is his first solo museum show.
After the accident, Herrera felt called to become a saint maker and honor his Catholic faith through a drive to create. He quit his job as a construction worker and devoted himself to making art full-time, experiencing a creative burst that shows no sign of ceasing more than three decades later.
“He’s always making, always experimenting,” Dial-Kay says. “He had a show at Evoke Contemporary [in Santa Fe], and I didn’t even recognize some of the work. He calls himself an ‘art-aholic.’ ”
Nicholas Herrera in his studio.
Beth Wald, courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.
HERRERA CREATES CARVED IMAGES IN A blocky style in which his subjects appear compacted. Their limbs hew close to their bodies, which are vaguely reminiscent of holiday nutcrackers and equally painted in vibrant tones.
Traditional religious figures—San Ysidro, La Muerte, Jesus Christ, and Our Lady of Sorrows among them—are just a part of his canon. For Herrera, the flotsam and jetsam of contemporary life—much of it in the form of auto parts—become his medium as readily as traditional santero materials like ground and hand-gathered pigments, rabbit-skin glue, piñon resin, and hunks of cottonwood, cedar, and pine.
Herrera traded a hard-partying lifestyle and fast cars for the more sedate hobby of outfitting lowriders with Catholic iconography and hot-rod-esque detailing. Northern New Mexico’s lowrider culture, which places more of an emphasis on religious art than in other locales, informs his sculpture. Auto parts from hoods to hood ornaments and hubcaps are repurposed and refashioned along with spent bullet casings, bicycle pedals and gears, and salvaged sheet metal. Often large in scale, these multimedia sculptures are comprised of small vignettes arranged in tableaux that tell smaller stories.
Herrera's "Protect and Serve" (1994).
Photograph by Beth Wald, courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.
His 2005 Lowrider Nativity, for instance, which is in the Harwood show, combines a carved and painted wooden cabinet with a series of three built-in nichos. Each depicts a different scene, including one that shows Herrera drunk, drug-addicted, and destitute with the figure of San Miguel watching over him. Another depicts San Gabriel blasting his trumpet. Atop the cabinet are a series of motorbikes made from spare parts. Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus lead the pack, flanked by the Biblical Magi on choppers of their own. “It’s one of his classic vignettes with San Miguel fighting off evil,” Dial-Kay says.
Although his mother dabbled in art and he’s been carving since he was 12 years old, Herrera is self-taught. Despite never having pursued a formal art education, he has become a source of inspiration for many young creatives coming up through New Mexico’s public schools today.
“A lot of those kids are full of energy and just want to do some art,” says Herrera, who founded an apprenticeship program for local youth out of his studio, works on restoration projects for regional churches and moradas, and has led art-making workshops at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe and at other museums. “Schools don’t really have the facilities to help the kids with art. It’s not a real big deal around here.”
"Los Matachines" (2012) is part of the exhibition.
For local kids who are struggling with pressure to drink and take drugs, he also serves as a role model. “Young people who want to be artists see that there is an opportunity out there for them,” says Luis Tapia, a fellow santero and longtime friend of Herrera. “I think Nick provides that.”
Tapia and his wife, journalist Carmella Padilla, met Herrera in the 1990s and have watched the trajectory of his career. “Nick is kind of a maverick, and really stands alone in the genre in so many ways,” Padilla says. “He works toward a vision that’s his own, even when working within the tradition.”
She compares him to artists like Patrociño Barela and other wood-carvers of the early 20th century. “[They] were working within the influence of their tradition and upbringing, but also bringing their unique personality to the work,” Padilla adds. “His work has personality.”
from left
An installation view of "Nicholas Herrera: El Rito Santero"; The exhibition also includes an arranged altar, bultos, and retablos.
Photograph by Brad Trone, courtesy of Harwood Museum of Art.
SURROUNDED BY THE SNOWCAPPED SANGRE de Cristo Mountains and Carson National Forest, the small settlement of El Rito comes at the end of a desolate 12-mile drive after turning off US 84. A mile or so past a local church, a sign for Herrera’s studio appears. A narrow dirt track leads to the gate, which opens onto 10 acres that have been family owned for multiple generations. Here, Herrera, one of the village’s 150 or so full-time residents, lives in an adobe home built in the 1800s.
Numerous projects, both completed and in various stages of completion, fill the artist’s two-story studio and grounds he shares with his partner, documentary photographer Beth Wald. Outside, what looks like a normal clothesline with wash hanging out to dry is actually a metal sculpture. The shirts, pants, and bra suspended from the line are crafted from the hoods of cars, including several Chevy Impalas, left over from different projects over the years.
Asked what inspired the sculpture, Herrera says, “It’s just something that you see every day. Around here, everybody has a clothesline.” The spirit of using what surrounds him—from the land itself (early on, he gathered local clays to make his pigments) to the cars he drives to the people he lives among—is the subtext.
His work speaks most intimately to Hispano communities of northern New Mexico just like his. It’s those people whom he’d love to see filling the Harwood. “My focus now is in getting more of the local community around here to see the show,” he says. “A lot of local Hispanics don’t go to the museums, but we belong there too.”
"El Rito Santero," acrylic on carved wood.
The artworks on view at the Harwood come largely from private collections, including contributions from the Tia Collection, in Santa Fe. Before the exhibition opened, Herrera hadn’t seen many of the works since he’d sold them. Among the earliest, on loan from the Smithsonian, is a carving, smaller than 2 x 3 feet, from 1994 titled Protect and Serve. It depicts Jesus in the back of a police cruiser being hauled off to a destination identified by a road sign as “Gringo Hills.” The piece draws a clear connection between White authoritarianism and minority persecution.
“One of the amazing things about Nicholas is his ability to stay rooted in this tradition of santeros but also to work on these really contemporary issues, including social and political commentary,” Dial-Kay says. When museum staff unpacked the crate from the Smithsonian, Herrera remembers the vibe was solemn. “Like being at a funeral,” he says. “You know, when the coffin’s ready to go down? Everybody’s real quiet, real serious.”
“He’s definitely an innovator in the art world of New Mexico. The tradition of the santos is our cultural foundation.”
—Luis Tapia, santero
After it was unpacked, he showed museum staffers a unique feature of which they were previously unaware: The cruiser’s roof is hinged, and a mural of Our Lady of Sorrows is carefully painted on the underside.
Relying on exemplary figures of Catholic tradition to address contemporary issues isn’t unique to the work of Herrera. But his art does convey a singular inner sense of compassion for the downtrodden, as well as a recognition of the sacredness of human life, both of which were inherent in Christ’s message.
“He’s definitely an innovator in the art world of New Mexico,” Tapia says. “The tradition of the santos is our cultural foundation, and Nick took that in and then slowly started to reach for other interpretations. That’s carried him all these years. He wants to express to people that he did come from a rough time and survived.”
The Holy Family may have traded a wooden cart for a chopper, a Plymouth Valiant, or a Ford Galaxie 500, but that’s because contemporary people have swapped them too. Inherent in Herrera’s work is the sentiment that the times change but the spirit remains—and for those who struggle, martyrs and saints can still serve as role models.
For the El Rito Santero’s first solo museum exhibition, the Harwood Museum of Art, in Taos, has assembled a retrospective of works that reflect Nicholas Herrera’s personal story of redemption. Adapting Hispano New Mexican Catholic iconography to secular and contemporary themes, Herrera works across mediums, using found objects and traditional materials to make bultos, retablos, and large-scale sculpture.
During the run of Nicholas Herrera:
El Rito Santero, join the artist and the curator Nicole Dial-Kay for ticketed artist tours on February 13, May 15, and May 18. On April 24 at 6 p.m., writer Carmella Padilla will be in conversation with Herrera at the museum.
