Meet Entrepreneurs Global Cultural Entrepreneurs Judith Espinar, USA
| Judith Espinar, USA |
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The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market is the brainchild of Judy Espinar. What started in 2003 over breakfast as a spritied conversation with Tom Aageson, has exploded into a colorful two-day international festival. This unique and ever-growing market has earned Santa Fe the distinction of being the first U.S. city in the Creative Cities Network of UNESCO, the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. This year's Market brought over 22,000 visitors to Santa Fe; total revenues exceeded $1,000,000 USD, and the 114 participating artisans traveled back to over 40 nations where they used their income to build wells, schools, and expanded opportunities for their community's artisans.Espinar’s passion for folk art is rooted in her experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in 1966. Every weekend she and a few other volunteers stood by the side of the International Highway and waited for the truck drivers to offer them rides to other fiestas. “We didn’t know where we were going, but they did, and we knew we would find something interesting when we got in the back of the truck along with the chickens and the women in their beautiful skirts,” she says. Once in a new town she would walk around, talk to the ladies, and look at their crafts. In this way she saw remote parts of the country when the indigenous culture was still relatively untouched. And she began to see how much work could be done to build economic wealth for local communities through enabling Peruvian artisans to reach markets. Espinar realized she needed to learn more about marketing if she was going to help artisans. “I had no idea how to do that,” she says, “but I had good instincts.” She returned to New York and worked for many years on the business side of the fashion industry, while exploring an interest in indigenous Mexican mayolica ceramics on the side. A chance encounter with a curator from the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe more than a dozen years ago prompted her to move to Santa Fe and open The Clay Angel, a store featuring hand-painted ceramics from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Mexico. The extraordinary success of the International Folk Art Market has surprised even the strongest supporters. “The success of the market stunned all of us,” says Joyce Ice, director of Santa Fe's Museum of International Folk Art. “It was timely, it caught the imagination of the public and it appealed on different levels: intellectually, emotionally and aesthetically."
In addition to generating sales for the artists, more than 100 musicians and dancers representing folk traditions from countries such as Mali, Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela, Ireland, Malaysia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe performed and conducted demonstrations on traditional craft production. For full text please visit WorldView Magazine |
