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Photo by Luis Sanchez Saturno

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A R T C H A R A C T E R

M O N I C A S O S A Y A H A L F O R DC O L C H A E M B R O I D E R E R , R E T A B L O P A I N T E R

For the past 36 years, Santa Fe native Monica Sosaya Halford has been showing her bright, colorful colchas (fabric coverlets embroidered with the colcha stitch) and elegant retablos

(religious devotional paintings, usually on wood or tin panels) at Santa Fe’s annual Spanish Market, organized by the Spanish Colonial Arts Society. As the recipient of numerous awards, including the market’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, she is among an elite collective of artists to be recognized not only for her beautiful creations but also for her efforts in preserving the centuries-old, endangered art forms of Santa Fe’s Spanish colonial heritage. Yet even with coveted awards and honors, Halford does not see herself as a single force but rather as “one grain of sand among many, like the Egyptians believed,” each one supported by another. Halford

descends from one of the city’s original families, tracing her ancestors’ Santa Fe residency back to 1598. “My father owned land in the area [near the acequia] and built several of the houses on the block,” she remembers fondly. “So the street became [known as] Sosaya Lane.” Halford, a Santa Fe High School graduate who “always liked to draw from the second grade on” and whose work over time has “expanded into a larger field, which now includes reredos (reverse glass etchings) and painting on leather, tin and gourds,” muses on the healing power of her art in this way: “When I [make] a retablo, I want it to comfort the person [who is going to have it], to have a meaning to them.”Monica Sosoya Halford can be reached at rhalford41@msn.com.