Step into the home of Nitza Mediavilla Piñero and Francisco Toste Santana in south Charlotte and it feels more like a museum. Over 700 santos de palo, or wooden sculptures of holy figures, are displayed on shelves in every room, each painted with vibrant colors. These pieces, and their owners, trace their roots back to Puerto Rico.
“We lived all our lives in Puerto Rico,” Toste Santana said. “At the start of the pandemic, we made the move through the COVID pandemic. No friends here, no family.”
When they moved to Charlotte in 2020, the couple brought with them a collection they had been building since the 1990s.
“We started buying contemporary santos, not the old ones,” Mediavilla Piñero said. “Then we met some people who were old collectors, and we got crazy about the old santos. That was the point when we started really collecting old santos.”
Their passion grew into a mission. They spent weekends traveling to small towns across Puerto Rico, meeting wood carvers and collectors, learning everything they could about the tradition.
“We really learned what the Puerto Rican is because it’s different,” Mediavilla Piñero said. “The way people that you meet in the city is very different from the towns.”
But turning a personal collection into a museum exhibit took more than just passion. That’s where art historian Dorie Reents-Budet came in. She has worked with the Tostes to curate “Art of Devotion.”
“Choosing objects for this exhibition was a huge challenge,” Reents-Budet said. "Because the collection includes more than 1,200 stellar examples of santos carvings.”
Reents-Budet says the couple’s collection spans generations of artists and styles. The santos are carved from wood and layered with paint. Most times, they depict saints, the three kings or other holy figures.
“We decided to take a historical viewpoint and choose pieces that show the development of the tradition and how it changed through time and the creativity of the myriad artists over 2 1/2 centuries,” Reents-Budet said.
For centuries, towns in Puerto Rico's mountainside areas had few priests and even fewer churches. Still, families found ways to practice their Catholic faith by creating small altars in their homes, featuring these hand-carved santos.
“There were priests in Ponce and in San Juan,” Reents-Budet said. “But the rest of the island was basically a no man’s land of small, itinerant, very poor farmers, scratching out a living.”
The first santeros, or wood carvers, weren’t trained artists. They were farmers and neighbors, carving not for money, but to show their faith.
“For the first 200 years, [the santos] were never sold,” Reents-Budet said. “They were simply given to neighbors. This was really an act of personal faith and that was responding to current needs of the faithful in their home.”
As someone with Puerto Rican roots, I’ve seen santos in my family’s homes in New York and Puerto Rico, resting on tables, quietly present. But seeing hundreds of them together feels like something more. A visual history of who we are as Puerto Ricans.
“We are so proud of our tradition," Mediavilla Piñero said. "I would like them to see a different aspect of Puerto Ricans."
The exhibit will include it all: religion, art and personal Boricua touches.
“I’d like the people who come to see these artworks to understand that, wow, here’s this great art tradition that was born right here in the New World,” Reents-Budet said.
A tradition carved by Puerto Rican hands, shaped by faith and culture, and now, shared with Charlotteans.
Art of Devotion will open Aug. 2, at the Mint Museum Randolph.
