The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market (IFAM) opens Friday to the general public for its 22nd year and runs through Sunday. Market CEO Stacey Edgar talked with KUNM about how the market is continuing despite global turmoil and issues with artists getting visas to come to the United States.
STACEY EDGAR: We were actually pretty nervous about some of the challenges that have come up over the past couple of years, but what's really amazing about this community in New Mexico, including our Senator [Martin]Heinrich's office and Congresswoman Teresa Ledger Fernandez, is all the support we get in navigating any new law, especially when it comes to visas and tariffs. So, this year we have 148 artists from 53 countries, and while we were anticipating more visa challenges, we really had a fantastic response. And we did do a backup plan this year. We made a wait list, which is the first time IFAM has ever had a wait list, and we were able to invite three artists off that wait list when a couple people did not get their visas. So we're going to have a full fantastic market, and we're expecting 20,000 visitors.
KUNM: In the past, you've had a lot of people are from cooperatives, is that still a focus, and why is that so important?
EDGAR: We have every kind of artist in business, so we have the one great master, we have family groups, we have social enterprises, and then we have a lot of cooperatives, and in fact we have a cooperative, Hadithi Craft from Kenya, who's a basket making group. They employ 1800 women, and so the impact of having cooperatives at our market is great. And in fact, the impact across all the business models is amazing. One of the things we've done the past couple years, because on their applications they say how many people they employ. We've been adding that up, and that less than 150 booths employs 10,000 people around the world, and almost 80% of those are women. And so it's really, really vital that we do look at those cooperatives, because the impact that they make.
KUNM: In terms of some of the countries coming who might be going through particularly challenging times right now. I'm thinking of Ukraine, Iran, lots of the Middle East. Do you have folks coming from any of these areas of conflict?
EDGAR: We absolutely do, and it's really, really heartening to see how much the community embraces these artists, particularly knowing what they're going through to get here. So, in Ukraine, we've got two different artists coming, and one of them, Lesia Pona, last year she had a beautiful jacket that I really loved, and of course it sold really fast, and so I'm like, "Oh, Lesia, can you make me one? And so she's been making me this hand-embroidered jacket, and her town was under siege, and she wrote to me and said, "I'm making your jacket from a bunker, we're being bombed. I'm like, "Lessia, do not work on my jacket. Right? She's like, "No, it's what's keeping me grounded. My craft gives me hope. It is what takes me out of this place and puts me back in myself. And so I think being able to be part of this artist community and to step outside and see that the world is really both for you and with you, I think is really, really important.
KUNM: Why is it important that so many of the businesses are owned by women?
EDGAR: I will say that I think, and studies show women are really the multipliers, right? They create that ripple effect in their community, and this is not to say that our male artists are not equally important. I actually feel like the whole artisan sector operates in this way, in a very communal way, in which they're taking that income, whatever income they make, and they're rippling it out in sending their kids to school, in sharing that generational knowledge in the low impact and low carbon, zero carbon footprint that they're making with their craft. In fact, we were talking about a group in India run by a woman named Meeta Mastani, and they do these fabulous, fun T-shirts, right, hand-dyed, hand-printed, but they use polluted water that they bring in from the river to do their craft, and they have instituted technology that when they clean the water, it's now potable, the community can drink it. So through their craft they're making the environment even better than it was before, and that's what I think we see. All artists that are involved in our market are really, really looking at those community impacts, environmental impacts, and social impacts that their businesses can make.
