By PLS
Santa Fe is a major art market. New Mexico is very poor.
A headline in a recent New Mexican declared that house prices in Santa Fe rival those in Boston, but there’s no speculative bubble in real estate, we’re assured. Rental income, in most cases, won’t cover the mortgage installments.
Nevertheless, rents are not all that low. Many people who were born in Santa Fe can’t afford to live here anymore, can’t buy, can’t rent, not unless they have high professional salaries. Ordinary workers have to move south to Rio Rancho or Albuquerque. They commute to jobs in Santa Fe. That means driving. That means high gas costs.
City Council makes a big deal out of requiring developers to include supposedly affordable houses in plans for pricey sub-divisions. But even if all the affordable units got built, which often doesn’t happen, for interesting reasons, the number of units accumulated wouldn’t come close to meeting demand.
So it’s hard to live modestly in Santa Fe, which has a disproportionate number of people for whom that is not a problem, a segment of the population to which I–sigh!--do not belong. 
I have some friends with a genius for gleaning the second hand shops and creating looks that wow for practically nothing. However, this is also a city where sweet little $800 sweaters sell out before the markdown in January. Darn! Santa Fe casual, like the pueblo revival architecture dotting the hills all around the city, is not for the flat of wallet. Ethnic chic runs to Native American jewelry made of sterling silver, coral and turquoise, along with elegant antiques from Asia and Africa which (trust me!) can no longer be picked up for a song.
So Santa Fe is an excellent setting for an International Folk Art Market that offers exquisite examples of the world’s surviving handicrafts in a beautiful locale to entice both serious collectors and impulse shoppers to buy, buy, buy. This year's Folk Art Market took place last weekend.
Making beautiful things the old fashioned way, by hand, takes time and great skill. Innovating within a tradition demands both creativity and respect. The finished products cannot be offered dirt cheap, not if the artisans are going to receive a decent, life-sustaining, comfort-providing income. However, fine handicrafts are relatively affordable at the International Folk Art Market, because there’s no need for middlemen to make a profit. Customers benefit, yet the artisans themselves receive more. It’s a win-win situation.
But ordinary working people have very tight budgets. They don’t flock to the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, by and large. They go to Wal-Mart and Costco. While we relatively fortunate members of society are admiring folk arts and crafts, it’s probably wise to remember that it was the industrial revolution that raised the material standard of living for most human beings. Aristocrats and rich merchants commissioned beautiful handicrafts; most people lived in huts and wore clothes to the threadbare stage. Yes, they too had some nice textiles, and they often beautified their walls, but they died young. This is something to keep in mind as we lament the attenuation of traditional social formations.
Santa Fe, by the way, has passed a living wage ordinance. Cheapskate employers have gone to court to prevent the new wage scale from coming into effect, threatening to fire people right and left if it does. Thus far, their efforts to force people to continue to work for practically nothing are failing. So workers in Santa Fe will receive more than the federal minimum wage. That still won’t make home ownership easy or even possible for most bottom of the wage scale people. It won't keep them out of union-busting Wal-Mart.
Maybe we should request some international aid agencies to come to Santa Fe to start projects for generating supplementary income among low income people in New Mexico. Of course, there are equivalent local agencies, and the finer results of such projects feed into the long-established, well-known Santa Fe Indian and Hispanic Markets, along with the work of local artists who are renowned for reviving languishing arts and crafts. Top Native American weavers or potters, for instance, sell their work at the five figure level, while the more numerous and less skillful artisans supply trinkets for the year round tourist trade, some attractive, some god-awful. The range between exquisite and god-awful is particularly pronounced during the art tours promoted each summer by numerous communities in Northern New Mexico. But skill levels increase year by year, and the tours help to maintain community solidarity and pride.
Which reminds me: there was a time when international aid workers also encouraged third world women to make ugly, useless objects by hand. The resulting products were called handicrafts, although there was no craft to them. I remember poison pink crocheted doilies. I remember floral embroidery applied lightening-fast to cheesy toweling with mile long basting stitches: cheap, but worthless. That approach was a dead end for the women—and for the traditional crafts that were being travestied. Today the emphasis is on quality. Even the relatively standardized production of folk art destined for commercial outlets is sturdy or attractive enough to attract large numbers of middle class customers. But large scale commercial production does not encourage the exercise of artisanal skill at the highest level.
Last year, at Santa Fe’s first International Folk Art market, the first to be held, there were 63 artists from 36 countries offering their work. This year there are 95 artists. Last year the organizers hoped and prayed that they would get the 3000 visitors that would allow the venture to break even. The final gate count was 14,000. I don’t know the number for this year–probably more, but I do know that Milner Plaza, where the market was set up, was a crush of people. It was so crowded I’m amazed that anyone had the patience to look and buy. But they did. Human beings must come with a very powerful shopping gene. 
I did not carry credit cards or a check book with me for two reasons. One, I have lived in so many countries, I have acquired my folk art treasures in their country of origin. Two, I have blown my surplus for the summer on pre-payments for a vacation I am going to take in September. I didn’t trust myself not to give in to temptation.
I know me. If I had been equipped to buy, I’d have had a hard time walking away from the $700 Moroccan throw rug, the $2000 silk carpet from Uzbekestan, the two Central Asian embroidered jackets I could have for only $300. Of course, there were items that cost less, as well as masterpieces costing much, much more. A love for hyperbole prompts me to say I envy those with MacMansions in the hills north of Santa Fe: more room to exhibit a collection of beautiful textiles and artifacts. But I don’t really. Already I have too much on display and too much more stashed away in boxes. The more you have, the more you have to care for.
Most of the time I spent at the market I was giving a helping hand to a friend of mine. Her name is Shamlu Dudeja. She established a women’s cooperative in the Calcutta region, where artisans are trained in kantha embroidery technique and design. The cooperative also markets the clothing and home furnishings that are produced. The kantha embroidery method has been used for hundreds of years in West Bengal. It’s a simple running stitch technique that yields designs of great charm. Tiny stitches in vibrant colors may depict a traditional story, provide a pleasing design or even illustrate some element of modern life.
Two of the illustrations here are scanned from a kantha work bedspread I bought from Shamlu when I was living in Calcutta.
The photo is of Shamlu (right) and Sikha Kunta at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market. Sikha is a master kantha embroidery artist. She demonstrated her work in Santa Fe last week. Shamlu is wearing a kantha work sari.
The illustrations of antique kantha work come from the dustjacket of Folk Arts and Crafts of Bengal: The Collected Papers by Gurusaday Dutt. Dutt’s groundbreaking collection forms the core of a fascinating museum located about fifty miles south of Calcutta.