International Folk Art Market

The most amazing event happens in Santa Fe during the second weekend of July. It is the International Folk Art Market (www.folkartmarket.org) which is the largest international folk art market in the world. I have had the unique opportunity to be involved with the market since its inception in 2003 and have witnessed the incredible coming together of forty nationalities participating as artists selling their unique art work. Visitor attendance has grown from seven thousand to twenty thousand in six years! The opportunities this market has given these people is tremendous, as many artists earn enough money at the market to support their village for one year or dig a well to bring fresh water to their village. The stories of the participants are heart rendering. An example is Manjula Thakur (see her Bollywood photo below), an artist from the Janakpur women’s Development Center in southern Nepal who I sponsored and was so blessed to meet this summer.
Manjula never attended school, was married at 13 and very quickly had three children. Unsure how she would care for them and awae that she and her husband couldn’t feed more children, she decided to participate in the voluntary sterilization program that was offered in her village. This was a dramatic decision, one that was shunned by other villagers. When the doctor offered her the hundred dollars that was part of the program’s volunteer reward, she declined. Realizing that she needed to earn an income, she began selling chickens. It wasn’t until someone from the Janakpur women’s program came to her village looking for women who knew how to paint in the traditional Maithil style that she remembered her mother teaching her how to paint the walls of her house with lively paintings depicting deities or other symbols that would protect and bring good fortune to the household. When she came from her village to the Center she was veiled and chaperoned by her husband or her father-in-law. The response to her artwork from the Market amazed her and one could see her confidence soar. At the final event of the market she took the microphone and said, “We should not neglect or ignore our culture and tradition. My skill of art is so important and I have realized that after participating in the Santa Fe Market.”
Maniula confident and happy found her way, without speaking any English and through four major airports, back to her village brimming with confidence and the enthusiasm for her work. What an incredible gift I received in connecting with her!