Celestino Avilés lives in Orocovis, the hilly central region of
Puerto Rico that is the geographic heart of the island. His
artistic genre, the carving of wooden santos (saints), is
acknowledged to be at the spiritual heart of Puerto Rican
cultural identity. The carving of saints dates to the early
period of the Spanish conquest. Farmers in the isolated
mountains of the island carved saints out of local woods, such
as cedar, developing their own indigenous aesthetic. It is
largely due to the efforts of Celestino Avilés that the craft of
saint-carving has remained a vibrant tradition in his homeland.
Avilés began carving rings of corozo, the nut of a prickly palm
tree, when he was a child. Later, while selling his rings at
craft fairs he began to study with master santeros (saint
carvers) Norberto Cedeño and Juan Cartagena. Soon Avilés became
known for his skilled carving of saint figures, choosing to
leave them unpainted and depicting them with closed eyes, in "a
position of absolute religious solemnity" as h