About Marco Oviedo

Marco A. Oviedo is a visionary woodcarver/sculptor who lives and works in Chimayo, New Mexico. The piñon-juniper dotted foothills of historic Chimayo provide a backdrop for the traditional folk art and unique contemporary bronze sculpture that Marco produces. Since the early seventies he has interpreted New Mexico religious folk art styles and southwest designs in his creations.

As an eighth generation descendant of a family of woodworkers and woodcarvers who originated in Oviedo, the capital of the province of Asturias in Spain, Marco attributes his woodcarving skills to his grandfather. Marco is proud to carry the family tradition forward — involving the entire family in aspects of the production of his work.

Marco traces his artworking tradition eight generations back to the northern Spanish city of Oviedo. His family emigrated to Mexico City where Marco was born, and there he learned his art as a young boy from his Spanish grandfather, Aurelio Maria Oviedo. While working on his Ph.D. in Animal Science at New Mexico State University, he met and married Patricia Trujillo, also from a generations-old family of New Mexico artisans known throughout the world for their weavings. Marco currently lives and works on his artwork on the Trujillo ancestral Rancho La Centinela in the high desert setting of Chimayó, New Mexico. Marco has combined his family tradition of woodcarving from Spain and Mexico with the traditions of carving New Mexican style “Santos.” He is one of very few santeros in the world who still uses age-old techniques of “estofado y encarnado” (gilding and flesh coloring of skin) in his woodcarvings.

In addition, Marco goes beyond tradition by making bronze sculptures of traditionally carved santos using special vacuum casting techniques to obtain artistic detail. He takes the traditional New Mexican style wooden Santos and personally casts them in bronze using the lost-wax process. Then he finishes them with special polychrome patinas at the Oviedo Foundry to create new and individual sculptural works of art found nowhere else in the world. Marco has also extensively studied the spiritual images of Native American culture and interprets them into bronze sculptures.