Retired professor organizing alternative Indian market
Schaaf said 68 artists are committed to showing work at Scottish Rite Center
A supporter of Native American art is organizing an alternative event for artists who weren’t invited this year to the Santa Fe Indian Market.
Gregory Schaaf, a retired professor of Native American history, said he’s renting the ballroom and other space in the Scottish Rite Center on Paseo de Peralta during the same weekend as the annual Indian Market, held Aug. 18-19 on the Santa Fe Plaza by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.
Schaaf said 68 artists are committed to showing their work at the Scottish Rite Center.
He said he’s counting on volunteers to help defray costs, help with supporting tasks such as setting up and tearing down the market, and other duties, including marketing and advertising.
“We have to do everything we can to minimize the direct costs and maximize the direct assistance we provide to the artists,” he said. “We want to make sure all their needs are taken care of.”
Robert Tenorio, a Kewa Pueblo — also known as Santo Domingo Pueblo —pottery maker and recognized master of his art, was wait-listed for this year’s Indian Market. At the SWAIA membership meeting in May, he said he felt disappointed in not being invited. He was eventually offered a booth by SWAIA, he said last week, but preferred to join other Native American artists at the market Schaaf is organizing.
Tenorio said even his pots are responding. “I was just so happy he had put that together,” Tenorio said. “I told him, no matter, my pots are coming back to life.”
Schaaf said he planned to return a signed contract and payment securing space at the center for the two-day event. The center, a property of the Scottish Rite Temple, dropped its daily rate of $2,300 to $2,000 per day and threw in the use of chairs and folding tables, he said.
Schaaf said he’s footing the bill for the venue, but is trying to raise money and in-kind donations.
“I personally guaranteed payment,” he said Thursday.
The decision to end tenure status at the Santa Fe Indian Market starting in 2017 rippled through a community of established Native American artists whose participation was guaranteed year after year. Decisions that awarded booths to contemporary artists rankled older, established artists who said the event was established to preserve traditional native arts and provide opportunities for Southwestern artists to support themselves and their families.
Elizabeth Kirk, chairwoman of the SWAIA board of directors, on Monday said she saw no conflict or competition with Schaaf ’s plans and the 96-year-old Santa Fe Indian Market.
The city, she said, is large enough to accommodate both events.
“We’re all here to see artists succeed,” she said. “We’re artist driven. If we can see artists succeed, or maybe take another avenue, we’re all for it.”
Schaaf said he decided to organize the event, which he said will be free to the invited artists and the public, to provide respected artists an opportunity to make up the income they lose by not participating in Indian Market. He added that he specifically invited the family members of longtime or founding artists at Indian Market.
“My major concern was for those elderly artists who relied on Indian Market for their livelihood,” Schaaf said. “And we’re talking about the basics — food and heat and co-pays for medicines and the money to put on their feast days and their ceremonies.”
Joe Baca, a maker of pottery according to traditional Santa Clara Pueblo methods and designs, said some artists rely on Indian Market for much of their annual income. Baca said he applied every year for 10 years before being accepted into Santa Fe Indian Market, then participated another 10 years before the jurying panel declined his application. This year, he didn’t bother to apply and is planning to bring his work to his friend Schaaf ’s alternative event.
“There seemed to be a move on the part of SWAIA and as a direction of their board of directors to bring in young, contemporary artists, and so as a consequence, many older traditional artists were the ones that were being eliminated during this selection process,” Baca said Monday.
SWAIA representatives have said the organization did not intentionally remove any artist from the annual twoday art market, considered the largest of its kind in the United States. The emphasis on the jurying process has meant some longtime artists not being invited or being placed on a wait list, they said.
At the SWAIA membership meeting in May, Nocona Burgess, a Comanche painter in Santa Fe, said talk of artists being kicked out of Indian Market was false. “It’s a juried show,” he said. “The prestige about Indian Market is that it’s a juried show.”