Eliseo & Paula Rodriguez

The following video is an interview with Eliseo & Paula Rodriguez at their home in Santa Fe New Mexico.

This interview took place on August 18, 1999. Kathy Flynn the Executive Director of The NNDPA NM Chapter did the interview.

Brought into this life in 1915 in Rowe, New Mexico, Rodriguez won a scholarship to the Santa Fe Art School at age 14. In 1936, he was part of a group of New Mexicans that was selected to paint murals for the Texas Centennial, depicting Coronado's incursion.

He worked with Louie Ewing under the New Deal on a mosaic base of the fountain at the Carrie Tingley Hospital for Crippled Children in Hot Springs, New Mexico. He was also involved in the Portfolio of Spanish Colonial Design and other portfolios in the possession of the Laboratory of Anthropology.

During his New Deal activities he also learned about an ancient Egyptian art form and helped to revive the tradition of inlay straw mosaics that had died out in the latter 19th century. As a result of this, he became best known for his fine work in the medium as has his wife. Their straw inlay crosses are coveted items winning many awards and their adult children and grandchildren are also continuing to carry out this art.

After the Second World War, Eliseo taught cabinet making and design at the NM Department of Vocational Education and worked for a company that specialized in creating architecture in churches in Colorado, New Mexico and California. One of the Stations of the Cross in Castro Valley, California, required 8 years for Rodriguez to finish; a smaller version is in the Penitente Morada in Cordova, New Mexico.

Eliseo Rodriguez was born in 1915 and passed away in 2009
Paula Rodriguez was born in 1915 and passed away in 2008
They were married in 1935, and had resided in the adobe home that they built themselves after their wedding.