This article is part of the Fine Arts & Exhibits special section on the art world stretching boundaries with new artistswinzir, new audiences and new technology.

In 1990, Nicholas Herrera, then in his 20s, was in a nearly fatal car crash. When he got out of the hospital, he went to jail for driving under the influence at the time of the accident, as well as for several outstanding warrants for speeding and driving with a revoked license. A guard liked his sketches of other inmates, and he told Herrera that his wife, a curator, wanted to give him a show when he was released.

Feeling as if he’d been given a second chance, Herrera became a santero, or saint maker, committing himself to making devotional paintings, carvings of saints and other religious pieces.

His bold work, which often incorporates wood carving and found objects, is now held in collections at places like the American Folk Art Museum and El Museo del Barrio, both in New York, the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, and the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, N.M.

ImageHerrera still lives on the family land where he grew up, collecting materials like old car parts to use in his art.Credit...Minesh Bacrania for The New York Times

One of his pieces, “Protect and Serve” (1994), a sculpture of Jesus Christ in the back of a police car, with a sign reading, “Forgive them Lord they know not what they do man,” is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Herrera, a 15th-generation New Mexican whose forebears arrived in the area in 1598, before the first Anglo settlement in Santa Fe, has Spanish, Mexican and Comanche ancestry. Herrera grew up on his family’s land in El Rito, a town of less than 1,000 people in northern New Mexico. He still lives there, working in his studio on the property. He picks up materials on his land, such as old car parts, wood and wire, to use in his art, something he has done all his life.

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