For years, legal travel to Cuba has been almost impossible for Americans, making this culture-rich island a forbidden fruit for the adventurous. When policy changes in 2011 greatly expanded travel opportunities for Cuba-bound visitors, Peggy Gaustad organized two Passport to Folk Art trips to share her love of this amazing country. The groups flew into Havana, pictured here, considered the leading cultural center of the country. Photo: Kelly Waller
A conversation with Peggy Gaustad
Peggy pictured at Havana’s La Bodeguita del Medio restaurant, one of Hemingway’s favorite watering holes and the home of house band TradiSon. Photo: Gay Browning
Peggy Gaustad first visited Cuba in 1999, with her husband, Stuart Ashman who grew up in Cuba, and their two children. Since then, the longtime board member of the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market has returned many times, including a 2009 scouting trip for the Market where she helped forge relationships with four Cuban painters and the five-piece band TradiSon, all of whom made acclaimed debut appearances at the Market in 2010.
Most recently, Peggy has been guiding her own people-to-people trips to Cuba for the International Folk Art Market and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, including three in the last three months. We caught up with Peggy between trips to talk about how travel to Cuba has changed since President Obama eased travel restrictions last year, what draws her to Cuban folk art, and her own personal strategies for shopping the Market.
Tell me about your first scouting mission to look at art in Cuba.
Three of us—Judy Espinar (Market co-founder and creative director), Charlene Cerny (Market co-founder and executive director), and myself—went in December 2009 with the intent of seeing what the state of folk art was. We were particularly interested in seeing the work of Cuba’s naive art movement, especially as it relates to the Afro-Cuban religion Santería. We saw lots of great paintings, especially in the town of Cienfuegos, on the southern coast. When we arrived, the local artists were assembled to show us their work, and it was fantastic. We ended up bringing back paintings from three artists to sell at a special booth at the Market—Carlos Alberto Cáceres Valladares, Cenia Gutiérrez Alfonso, and Roberto Domingo Gil Esteban—plus a fourth from Havana, Nancy Reyes Suarez.
What first drew you to the paintings?
The color and freshness really stood out for us. Primitive art, or arte naif, as it’s called in Cuba, is made by artists who have had no formal training in painting or drawing, and whose subjects mostly deal with daily lives, from everyday activities to the deities, or Orishas, from the Santería tradition. It’s not abstract at all, but figurative. It has a quality about it that is so approachable and bright and happy and joyful. It seemed a perfect fit for the market, and it was. That first year, 2010, we were sold out by 10 a.m. on Saturday.
How has travel to Cuba changed since you first visited the country?
It’s too new to have a sense of what’s happening other than there are a lot of groups going in, and lots of opportunities for Cuban artists. Since the artists came to the Market in 2010, groups who go to Cienfuegos seek them out. Ultimately, if they’re able to make a living by staying home, that’s great. This is a big change, especially in what it means for the greater community. Under the people-to-people licenses issued by our government, American travelers are engaged in a full-time itinerary of activities. And it is full. Everybody comes back exhausted. But that’s the nature of these licenses—that Americans will connect, in a meaningful way, with Cubans, and both sides will learn from each other. That does more than a lot of other avenues to break down walls.
How did you first connect with the band TradiSon?
One of our goals when we went in 2009 was to find a musical group for the Market. Music is everywhere in Cuba, and I was confident that when I heard it, I’d know it. We were having lunch in Havana at La Bodeguita del Medio [Hemingway’s old haunt] and these guys started to play, and I turned to one of my friends and said, “This is it.” When I told one of the band members that I was going to bring them to Santa Fe, he just looked at me like I was crazy. Can you imagine how many times they must hear that? But that’s part of the magic of Santa Fe—that you can make these things happen. We needed to raise money for their plane tickets and documents, so I made a few phone calls, and we made it happen.
Is there one moment that stands out the most from all your travels to Cuba?
When I traveled in February with the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, I arranged a dinner for the group at La Bodeguita del Medio, and for TradiSon to play for us in a private room. We had become fast friends when they’d come to Santa Fe for a week in 2010, and that night there was a huge amount of affection between us in the room. People could see that, the waiters could feel it—they were dancing. It was very spontaneous and real. Stuart is bringing the band to Los Angeles in August to play at the Museum of Latin American Art [and other venues], and on the following trip with the Folk Art Market group I presented each of them with a Dodgers hat. They were so excited.
How do you shop the Market?
What I generally do is get the supplement in The New Mexican and pore through it. Believe it or not, I’m not much of a shopper, but generally I go through the booths and look for a country that I’ve never been to and may never get to and see what they have. One year it was Bhutan, and another it was glassware from Palestine. I try to do my shopping early because for the last couple of years I’ve been busy running the Cuba booth.
—Katie Arnold
Award-winning travel writer, Arnold’s stories have appeared in Travel & Leisure, The New York Times and Sunset among other publications. She also writes a Raising Rippers column for OutsideOnline.com.
Passport to Folk Art trips offer people a chance to meet Market artists in their home countries and travel to places that have exceptional folk art traditions. A portion of the proceeds from the trips goes to support the Market.
Upcoming Passport to Folk Art trips include India with BJ Adventures in fall 2012 and a trip to Morocco in 2013. See their website for details. Peggy Gaustad will lead trips to Cuba in 2013. If you’d like more information, contact Peggy at canyonpots@aol.com.
Other stories of interest:
In 2009, CBS News did an interesting story about Hemingway’s house, Finca Vigía.
Here’s a wonderful video about José Fuster’s project.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2012 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Going to the Market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
wish I was rich! loved the Cuba report—it’s true these kinds of things break down walls faster than anything else—anyway, when is the Folk Art Festival in 2013?
sadly we can’t come this year—