About Arturo

Arturo-Francisco Olivas, SFO is a santero, a painter of santos in the New Mexican tradition of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. He is a member of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society and has exhibited his work at Santa Fe’s Spanish Market since 1994. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his santos including the Gerald Peters Award for the Best Use of Traditional Materials and Techniques. Arturo’s work is in several museum collections including the Museum of International Folk Art, The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, The Heard Museum, the Denver Museum of Art, the Regis University Museum, and the International Marian Library Research Institute. He has lectured on the history of santo making in New Mexico and has demonstrated the art using natural pigments, gesso, and varnish. His work is sold in galleries and museum shops throughout New Mexico including the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe.

Arturo is a bilingual and multicultural teacher who gives annual workshops for Dia de Muertos, Dia del Nino, and Globalquerque at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Together with papel picado artists Christopher Gibson and Catalina Delgado Trunk, Arturo is a founding member of Los Cacahuates, an art collective that specializes in constructing contemporary and traditional ofrendas for Dia de Muertos.

Arturo was admitted to the Third Order of St. Francis in September of 2007. As a Franciscan brother he combines his vocation to teach and to paint the santos with his call to follow in the foot steps of St. Francis in imitating Christ Jesus.

Arturo-Francisco Olivas, SFO

You can also visit http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/399370/mystory to get the latest daily journal being kept by Christopher Gibson.  Please send your thoughts to Christopher and Arturo on this site.  They have had close to 3,000 visits and entries so far.  You will be asked for your email address, password and first and last name in order to access his page.

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