The Tinsmith

A little more than six years ago, Santa Fean Autry Macias was living in Los Angeles, working in fashion and hating every minute of it.

"I had an office in a factory that I wouldn't call a sweatshop," Macias tells SFR, "but it was a bunch of immigrants being underpaid."

So she quit.

She wound up working as a bartender and crafting those complicated chalk drawings for Trader Joe's signage; but, she says, there was really no reason for her to continue living in LA. She talked her husband into moving back to Santa Fe, but says she still felt something was missing right up until about a year and a half ago.

"I had drawn my whole life, but I didn't like drawing anymore," she says. "And I was feeling bad about not making art. I hadn't really made a lot of art since college for myself, and it just came to me: tin. It didn't seem like a craft that was going to be super-involved or hard to learn—which, it turns out, is not true."

According to Macias, the tin community in Santa Fe is small and insular, with older artisans opting to keep their trade secrets. But when she met local tinsmith Justin Gallegos Mayrant (whose tin designs graced SFR's Santa Fe Manual a few years back), she finally had her in.

"I was lucky to find Justin because he was super sweet," Macias explains. "He hooked me up with his mentor [Michael E Griego] who made me some tools—most of the tools are handmade and not like leather tools you'll find all over the place—and Justin just gave me pointers."

The earlier days were rough, as Macias learned that tinwork requires no small amount of tools, chemicals and straight-up stamina. But she developed what she calls and obsession, adding that it's something one needs when learning such a complicated craft. Still, the design lessons she picked up at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco lent themselves to her practice.

"I think design was the most important thing I learned in college," she says. "The placement, how it'll look."

To create her pieces, Macias starts with simple drawings which she transfers to transparency sheets used for overhead projectors. She makes them into stencils and applies them to tin sheets, and from there she cuts, punches, shapes, bruises, buffs, shines and paints the tin into her creations. There's no specific term, she says, for her what she creates, though she calls them "ornamental" and "religious-adjacent." Think of it like folk art, though Macias doesn't wish to carry the title of folk artist.

"I don't want to label myself anything," she says, "but I do like how folk art is more loose, more fun, more casual; a lot of it is not so serious."

This colloquial feel can translate to designs like her early works, which featured a lowrider aesthetic, to the more recent pieces Macias unveils this week at Good Folk Gallery. For her new body, she created sacred hearts and other religious accoutrements—though she is not herself religious so much as a fan of the iconography—and animals and nature themes appear as well.

"I love religious imagery and playing off that in a more light-hearted way," she says. "I don't want to be anti-Catholic, although some people could take it that way with some of this stuff. But it's not good-versus-evil, it's light and dark—I don't think things are as simple as good and evil. A lot of the imagery comes from nature."

She's also puro Santa Fe, which of course means pieces that feature cow skulls, chile or the Zia symbol brightly adorned with design embellishments and enamel paints. Still, as a white woman, Macias is aware of and sensitive to cultural appropriation, and links her upcoming show more to being raised in Santa Fe and regular exposure to the many cultural and artistic categories found therein than she does in trying to capitalize on anyone's culture. Besides, her practice is hardly a money-maker—it's really more for personal enrichment and catharsis.

"I couldn't make them fast enough to make money," she notes with a laugh. "Or in large enough quantities."

Macias presides over her first solo show this week at Good Folk Gallery (formerly Davis Mather) at Marcy Street and Lincoln Avenue, and says she's quite excited.

"It's a really big deal for me," Macias muses, "even if it's just one little wall."

Autry Macias: Santos Del Desierto: 
5 pm Friday Oct. 26. Free.
Good Folk Gallery,
141 Lincoln Ave.,
983-1660