GUEST: This is a, uh, signed, uh, wood carving by Pat Barela, who was an artisan out of Taos, New Mexico.

My stepmother worked for a few summers in Taos at an art gallery in the mid-1950s.

And so she knew of him, she knew of his work, and, uh, she wanted a piece.

She bought it from him.

She couldn't remember what she paid for it.

Less than ten dollars.

But she could remember a couple packs of cigarettes also went with it.

APPRAISER: His nickname was Pat, and he carved all of his sculptures out of local wood.

And if you pick this up, you can kind of feel the weight of it.

It's not, like, terribly heavy, so I think it's probably cottonwood.

He was born around 1900 and died in 1964, and he was a self-taught artist.

From 1936 to 1943, he worked under the umbrella of the WPA, and that was something that started during the Depression by the Roosevelt administration.

And in 1936, they exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: Which was a really big deal.

And "Time" magazine named him the discovery of the year.

It has a lot of imagery.

I think the, the hands are folded in reverence on this side, and there's some other faces in there.

Those faces remind me almost of Easter Island carvings.

GUEST: Yep, they sure do can.

APPRAISER: Those are religious carvings.

They're spiritual figures.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: The good thing about this is, of course, you have this fabulous history, so there's no question about where it came from and who did it.

We really don't know the title of this, but we're lucky that he signed it on the bottom, uh, and that's easy to show.

It's P-A-T, and then part of the-- the letters in his last name.

When I was doing the price research on this, I found several figures about the same height.

Pieces like this were bringing $6,000, $8,000, easily...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Depending on the subject matter.

And in my opinion, this one is probably in the $8,000 to $9,000 range for retail.

GUEST: It's a happy number.

APPRAISER: Well, thank you for bringing it in today.

GUEST: Oh, awesome.

I'm thrilled to be here.