Tiger – Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Felipe Archuleta was born in Santa Cruz, New Mexico in 1910. He made his sculptures out of wood and other materials he found himself or could obtain from his neighbours. He used carpenter’s tools to fashion the various parts of each work, and nails and glue to assemble them. He smoothed the joins with a mixture of sawdust and glue, which also built up the surfaces.

Archuleta’s first sculptures depicted those animals he knew best – sheep, rabbits, burros, and cats. He soon began to make larger, sometimes life-size, animal sculptures, expanding his repertoire to include giraffes, elephants, monkeys, and others based on pictures he found in children’s books and natural history magazines. Archuleta generally emphasized the ferocious nature of the animals he portrayed by providing them with irregularly carved teeth, wide-eyed stares, and exaggerated snouts and genitals.

Felipe Archuleta, who has spent most of his life in Tesuque, New Mexico, worked as a carpenter for over thirty years. In 1967, unable to find work, he prayed to God to alleviate his poverty and desperation. His subsequent religious awakening led to his work as a carver of animals, for which he has been justly celebrated. He died in 1991.