Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Eric Saunders found his passion as a woodcarver of Puerto Rican santos in 2007. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Advertising, he completed his second bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts in 2017. He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he continues to make sculptures implementing the techniques of the traditional Puerto Rican carver (“santero criollo”). In addition, he works with abstraction using wood shavings that are the timber remnants from carving santos. He also continues to work on screen printing posters at his new workshop in San Antonio.

Carving santos on wood is one of the oldest traditions in Latin American popular art. Just like this medium has evolved differently from one country to another as it takes root in its ether and acquires its own identity, my work looks to absorb a new, identifying trait- a kind of artistic mutation. My proposal infuses this traditional practice with modern iconography, reinventing a typically religious symbol as a new pop-cultural object, albeit no less sacred.

The wood shavings used to create these sculptural pieces are the timber remnants from carving santos.

With this three dimensional work, I seek to imbue the canvas with the soul of the pieces that gave birth to this unique texture. As a block of wood takes human shape, the curved, sharp, asymmetrical slivers of wood are formed. The raw material undresses with each furrow of the knife, and the trappings created become something else- an abstract, deconstructed wardrobe that still holds the soul of not only its initial organic form, but the sculpture the original form metamorphosed into.

A saint’s robe becomes one shard of wood, the face of a virgin another sliver, a hand’s contour forms the scraps that create new, layered, reclaimed beauty. The act of creating provides the resources for new creation. I attempt co conserve history by propelling it to a new generation.