Interview with Roberto Cardinale

Santa Fe, New Mexico artist

Holy Cross Benedictine Abbey Church - Cañon City, Colorado

The Abbey church was built in 1926 in Tudor Gothic Style to serve the monks and students of the Holy Cross Abbey and boys’ school. It was designed and built by L.A. Des Jardins and Joseph Dillon, both Denver architects.  It is an important structure to me as I spent almost five years there as a Benedictine monk. It was in the monastery that I began a life-long interest in ecclesiastical architecture. Several years after I left the monastery, my wife PJ and I were married at the Abbey Church in 1967.

The drawer in the base of the sculpture is a collage/assemblage made with objects and photos of the church, our wedding and related objects and images by PJ Cardinale.

Roberto Cardinale with collage/assemblage by PJ Cardinale
13 ¾” wide x 12 ¾” deep x 21 ½” high
Santa Fe, NM - March 2022

This is an email interview with my friend Roberto Cardinale whose art practice is focused on sculptural objects of spiritual architectural structures. His studio is in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

How did you get started with making your art, how long have you been at it and what drives you to keep going?

I decided I wanted to be a sculptor when I was 9 years old. I made a lot of carvings and in junior high, I had a great art teacher who taught me to shade and draw trees. Also I met a artist who was in the class with me and he taught me to draw eyeballs with vicious thumb tacks in them dripping blood.

Then I went to a Catholic High School which didn’t have art classes. I got into sports, physics and chemistry. Then I went on to the University of CO at Boulder and dissatisfied, dropped out in my 3rd year of electrical engineering and entered the Benedictine Monastery in Cañon City, CO. There I found my calling, fell in love with ecclesiastical architecture and left after 5 years because the Abbot of the monastery wouldn’t let me study art. He said the Catholic Church has all the art that it needs from the Renaissance.

I got my Master’s in Art at (U of Northern CO in Greeley) with an emphasis in ceramics and jewelry and because I needed to make a living, a teaching certificate and became a high school art teacher.

After 3 years of teaching, I decided to get my doctorate and eventually became a university professor at Ohio State, the University of Arizona, a director of the Program In Artisanry at Boston University, and president of the San Antonio Art Institute.

All the while, I was doing my art, sculptural jewelry, mostly I worked late in the evenings. My jewelry did very well, I exhibited in a number of galleries around the country and did literally hundreds of wedding bands and lots of other commissions.

The jewelry work took a toll on my health so while I was at San Antonio, I started doing drawings and collages late at night with the discarded plans of the art school that we were building. Then on one Spring break, my wife PJ, an artist I had met in grad school and later went back to the Holy Cross Abbey to be married, were visiting Santa Fe and the Santuario de Chimayo.

I was taken with two small primitive adobe and weathered wood church sculptures displayed on a low wall near the church. I told my wife that I was temped to liberate one of the churches. She said, you can’t steal a church, why don't you just make your own. And that’s what I did. I showed them to a gallery owner in Taos, she gave me a show, most of the pieces sold. I was having a wonderful time making all of the these wonderful New Mexican historic churches, churches from Mexico, then Europe, England and other parts of the US and the Americas. I was able to get several museum shows, lots of commissions and I even did some synagogues. The church or other spiritual structures give the people of a community a special space to sanctify their beliefs and create a landmark ceremony in their lives.

What are some of the things you are thinking about with your work with the church structures?

I love the importance of the ecclesiastical form as it is a structured space dedicated to a deep faith in a set of beliefs.

What is your typical studio practice in terms of time spent working in the studio and how does that fit into the rest of your life?

I love to make things, and art is the highest order of structured form that the human mind can produce. My typical day as a professor of art or an art administrator, which I did for 26 years was doing a full day’s work and slipping in a 20-30 minute power nap sometime after lunch. Often this was just in my office chair. The nap provided me with the energy to work until almost midnight. After dinner and the dishes, I would do office work until about 8:30 pm and then go into my studio until 11:30 pm until I got physically tired, then I would go to bed.

I always had a studio space, often just a small bedroom, but a space that was my own and that I didn’t have to dismantle and clean up every night. Often on the weekends, I would get extra time if family didn’t consume it.

I have focused on ecclesiastical structures since the mid 1980’s. I am infatuated with certain structures from Spanish Colonial churches in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and of course Mexico. Churches from the Middle Ages like Chartres in France or the Canterbury cathedral in England. I keep files on churches that excite me and put post-it notes on pages of books on the most beautiful villages churches in Italy. So when I’m finishing a piece, I start flipping through my files and books until a particular church speaks to me. I have my favorites like the Santuario de Chimayo near Santa Fe, of which I have made many versions. I identify with Monet painting the facade of the Rouen Cathedral many times to capture the feeling of the light at different times of the day. I always do it differently but start with historic photos and do drawings from them to establish the scale and feeling of the structure.

Then I move directly to drawing on the rough-sawn New Mexico White Pine and start cutting the pieces. My techniques are simple, no complex joinery and now no fasteners except Tite Bond water-soluble glue. I use water-soluble glue, so that when I make a mistake, and I make lots of them, I wet the joint and pry it apart. After I get the structure completed, I stain the entire piece, inside and out with a brown latex stain, and when dry, I rub the exterior with a kitchen paraffin wax which will act as a resist. I use a stiff scrub brush to remove the excess wax, then I select 3 colors of latex paint and mix it right on the surface of the piece with one brush, dipping from each of the 3 colors without washing the brush in between applications until I get a thick, multi-layered and textured surface. When dry, I selectively scrape areas of the surface, add trim and detail colors and then selectively rub the surface with a graphic stick to produce a look of age and wear.

What have been the main challenges, disappointments and struggles over the years in terms of developing as an artist?

As an academic in a university setting, the making of art was not considered an appropriate intellectual pursuit in the tenured track accomplishments of a university professor. So during the day, I was a teacher/administrator of art and art education, writing and publishing as required, and at night an artist.

Today, I still do my art from about 8:30 pm to midnight. Even now, no longer a teacher/administrator, I still work late at night and during the day I sell real estate and have been doing that for over 30 years. I am represented by Patina Gallery here in Santa Fe, San Angel Gallery in San Antonio, the Marshall Gallery in Scottsdale and Hand Artes in Truchas, NM near Taos.

What is your advice to younger artists in the 25-45 age range as far as keeping the creative spark alive and working on art?

If making art is an essential part of who you are, then you have to make a serious business of your art, and if that doesn’t provide enough income to support yourself and others that depend on you, then you have to find another way to make a living that will allow you to seriously pursue your art.

A poet/writer friend of mine decided he was going to be a USPS mailman because the schedule would allow him to write after he finished his daily routine. He survived financially and eventually became a well-known writer. Integrate your art with your means of making a living. Let people know that you are a serious professional in your day job. If you perceive yourself as a professional, serious people around you will see you that way too.

Why is it worth it to keep going?

I simply love to make things (my art) and look forward to finishing the piece I’m currently working on and starting a new one and I don’t even know what that will be. But I know the inspiration will come. And after an art career of over 75 years, I’ve decided that I want my epitaph on my tomb stone to be, “He made some beautiful things.”

Works in the Museum Archives

OM.2016.280 & OM.2016.280 - Roberto Cardinale - both collages on paper

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TAKE A MOMENT: Feel your heart beating.

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