Passion for folk art
Museum exhibit celebrates market co-founder’s collection
SANTA FE — When Judith Espinar first traveled to Mexico in 1961, she fell instantly in love with a clay casserole pot. The future co-founder of the International Folk Art Market had no idea how to cook. But she cradled that pot in her lap like a baby on her return flight to New York.
That first piece launched a collecting passion on display at the Museum of International Folk Art on Sunday, Dec. 16. “A Gathering of Voices” features more than 200 promised gifts from Espinar’s thousands of global folk artworks, primarily colorful ceramics from Mexico, Spain, France, Hungary, Morocco and more.
The gathering seed first sprouted when Espinar was a little girl. She placed pressed flowers from her Pennsylvania garden in a book “so they wouldn’t go away.”
It began to flourish after the college-aged Espinar returned home to visit her family.
She discovered her retired pharmacist mother digging ferociously in the garden.
“I could see that her mind wasn’t engaged,” Espinar said. “She was doing this and that in the home and the garden. It frightened me. She wasn’t that kind of person; she was more cerebral. I said, ‘I’ve got to get interested in something else other than my career’.”
That career propelled her to the top of the fashion industry, where she worked as a trendspotter for Butterick Fashion. Eventually she would work for Vogue Patterns International and become the director of the Evan Picone Design Studio.
During that first trip to Monterey, Mexico, Espinar marveled that after spending a year at Cornell University studying art history and design, she had never heard a word about folk art. The clean-edged look of Scandinavian modern and Germany’s Bauhaus design were all the rage.
“I thought I knew everything about design,” she said. “I was sitting in what felt like a giant
From field of casserole dishes. They were beautifully painted and exciting. They were under $2 — nothing. It was spontaneous; it was joyful; it was colorful.
“I feel this was destiny for me.”
She began planning trips that doubled for both business and collecting, researching the pottery centers of countries across the globe.
She didn’t just collect; she used her pieces at home in the kitchen and dining room. She saw them as functional works of art as well as links to tradition and culture.
“I decided when I retired I would go to a community that would appreciate what I was doing,” she said.
She moved to Santa Fe in the 1990s and opened the Clay Angel folk art ceramics store. The shop would become the nucleus of the International Folk Art Market she helped launch in 2004. That market has hosted nearly 1,000 artists from nearly 100 countries, with sales totalling $28 million across 15 years.
The exhibition will re-create some of Espinar’s favorite home groupings.
“The Ladies” spans a group of hand-built, hand-painted ceramic figures, many laden with symbolism.
“Some of them are on horseback,” she said. “Hand-made figures are disappearing. They’re hard to do and the cultures are disappearing. They’re about monumentalizing traits of women and celebration.”
Some of the figures are mermaids, especially those from Peru.
“Mermaids are a thing there,” Espinar said. “The mermaid groupings in Mexico
represent the celebration of women to do whatever they need to do.”
An eagle soars around a gold-flecked Mexican jar by Jesús Alvarez Ramírez. Created in the brunido or burnished style, it was polished before being placed in the kiln.
“You feel like the eagle can just fly off,” Espinar said.
She used the snake-like, fish-shaped “Serpientes” by the Mexican artist Herón Martinez as a candle holder, complete with wax drippings. It’s a mythical creature with precise etching on the fins.
Espinar’s donation fills in considerable gaps in the museum halls. The Alexander Girard collection extends from the 1940s to the 1970s. Espinar’s pieces add a more contemporary flair.
“This fills in the sweet spot,” museum director Khristaan Villela said. “There are masterpieces by some of the best artists.”