Traditions in tension
Spanish Market faces challenge of being forward-looking while maintaining its colonial character
When it comes to putting an avant-garde twist on a deeply entrenched tradition, how much is too much?
That’s the big question facing artists and organizers of Traditional Spanish Market. Nearly seven decades after it first showcased the Spanish Colonial-style arts and crafts that have endured for centuries as part of New Mexico culture — such as weaving, tinwork, straw applique, and paintings and carvings of saints — the annual market is at a difficult crossroads.
The Spanish Colonial Arts Society,
which presents the two-day market each year in late July, plans to alter the guidelines of one arts category that allows for some modification of time-honored methods — and draws more than a quarter of the artists who show their work.
But the process of setting new boundaries, while also preserving long-held practices, could prove challenging.
The planned changes come at a time when veteran Spanish Market artists say the number of shoppers attending the event, now in its 68th year, has declined — along with sales — in the past decade.
Some place blame for thinning crowds on the effects of the Great Recession of 2008-09. Others point to an increase in competition with other events, such as last weekend’s International Folk Art Market on Museum Hill, and a need to boost marketing efforts.
“The Folk Art Market has tapped a real nerve in this community, and that has impacted us to some degree,” said Robert Coffland, vice president of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society’s board of directors.
Kirk Ellis, a Santa Fe art collector, cited another possible reason for dwindling interest in Spanish Market: “After a while, there is a pervasive sameness to the inventory.”
Artwork shown at the market must be crafted in the techniques used during New Mexico’s Spanish Colonial Period, and with the same types of materials. Ellis and others said this could be leaving too little leeway for artists to stand out.
“Your eye immediately goes to those things that are moving the art forward,” Ellis said. “Any kind of traditional art has to evolve. Otherwise, it gets ossified, and you can’t allow that to happen. You lose collectors and you lose artists.” Many Spanish Market artists seem to agree. Of the nearly 160 adult artists participating in this year’s event, scheduled Saturday and Sunday on the Plaza, about 40 have entered a category called Innovations Within Tradition. Adopted in 2010, this division allows artists to brush up against established definitions of traditional art.
But many market stakeholders believe the guidelines must be expanded — giving artists more room to test those boundaries — as a way to draw younger artists and collectors. The guidelines also need to be better defined, artists say.
But finding the right balance might be a struggle. If the efforts go too far, some say, the traditional art market will veer away from its mission of preserving colonial styles and could become a copy of the Contemporary Hispanic Market — an art sale held the same weekend in the downtown area.
“Santa Fe is well known as a preserver of the past,” said David Rasch, Spanish Market executive director. “Our traditions are longlived here. But we’re also a contemporary arts center as well.
“Many see tradition as something that has to be thrown away — including artists who want to make contemporary work. So how to make the two live together is a challenge.”
With the backing of the arts society board, Rasch — who became the market’s third leader in less than a year when he was hired in the fall — intends to start convening groups of artists to begin overhauling the
Innovations category shortly after this weekend’s market.
To start with, he said, the society must come up with a better definition of “innovation.” Then, he said, it has to determine how far artists and judges are willing to bend when it comes to the use of alternative materials and tools, subject matter and forms in artwork submitted for the market.
He acknowledged the guidelines for Innovations Within Tradition remain vague. The rules say “innovation is encouraged as long as the work is based on New Mexican tradition” and then point an artist back to the guidelines for traditional submissions.
That’s not much help for artists trying to figure out what kind of work is considered innovative, Rasch said.
Some artists are more open than others to broadening the types of art shown at the market as a way to ensure it remains relevant.
Arthur Lopez, who is celebrating his 20th year with Spanish Market, said it must find ways to draw younger talent.
Lopez likes to incorporate contemporary imagery in his carvings of saints and other devotional figures. One of his works depicts Joseph piloting Mary and baby Jesus in a biplane, while another shows Jesus and the 12 apostles traveling by Volkswagen.
He has entered his work in the Innovations category in the past and thinks artists should be permitted to push the envelope in
all directions.
“So they paint a retablo on a skateboard and think it’s innovative,” Lopez said. “but it’s just another retablo on another type of board, and that in itself is not what makes it innovative or contemporary.”
Longtime Spanish Market artist Gustavo Victor Goler agrees the traditional art forms must be allowed to evolve, but he wants to see the traditions respected. The guidelines for Innovation, he said, might include coming up with a new design technique or incorporating social or political commentary into an artwork.
He’s no stranger to innovation — one of his pieces shows the holy family driving around heaven in a lowrider.
“Yes, we need to keep the traditional techniques so things don’t get too crazy and we stay within our mission statement,” he said, “but you have to allow the art form to grow.”
Even Ellis, the collector, said the arts society must proceed cautiously as it drafts new creative guidelines. If it’s done correctly, he said, the market will be able to sustain both traditional and innovative work. “One cannot be impeded in deference to the other. Both must be allowed to grow in the same frame.”
Santera Marie Romero Cash, who has taken part in the market for 45 years, said she has mixed feelings about fiddling with the current guidelines.
“I’m not sure it’s a good thing to make [Innovations] a more prevalent category,” she said, “because … the reasons for preserving the market’s cultural traditions still have to be a big part of it.”
And, she wondered, who gets to judge what is considered innovative?
“You make something, and then you make 50 of them? That’s not innovative — that’s repetitive,” she said.
More and more, she said, she finds collectors who want a piece of art that nobody else has, which might make a piece innovative in its own way.
“Something in this Innovation category has to grab the collector’s eye, and it may have to be a one-of-a-kind thing,” she said. “… Collectors are still very specific about having that one-of-a-kind art piece. That means I’m not going to make it again, and that’s why they pay the big bucks for that piece — because it’s more than innovative. It’s exclusive.”