2006
Martin Melaver, CEO

Q3b 2006

Recently, my immediate family – all 14 of us spread among three generations – went out to Santa Fe to celebrate my father’s 80th birthday.  It was Indian market week, a mecca for those interested in the very best of Native American pottery, jewelry, bead-work, weavings, etc.  And the place was jammed.
Against my own better judgment, I got caught up in the free-wheeling buying spree out there, and bought a pair of what I know are ridiculous looking cowboy boots, as well as this ceramic figure of a clown made by Kathleen Wall.
The clown has a rich tradition in southwest Native American craftsmanship.  Originally, these conchiti were figures made by Native Americans to poke surreptitious fun at the ways of the white man overrunning the place – until the church caught on to subtle political parodies and forbade the practice.  Eventually, the conchiti morphed into a native American maternal figure crawled upon by little ones, the so-called Storyteller figure which is now a familiar and popular purchase in any shop that sells indian crafts.  Recently though, the powerfully subversive conchiti has made a comeback, again poking fun at the ways of the dominant culture.
The irony was not lost on me as I made my own purchase: native American arts beautifully marketed to the art-buying clientele that throng to Santa Fe each year, pandering, making fun of and yes, profiting by and exploiting,  the soft underbelly of constant buy-buy-buy that has defined and continues to fuel our economic dominance.
It made me laugh . . . sort of.  My kids and I spent a bunch of time actually purchasing from a local retailer specializing in hemp goods (no guffaws please).  Prominently displayed on the shop window of this hemp store was a poster providing a litany of suggestions on how to make the world a more sustainable place.  Things like recycle, use compact fluorescents, buy local, organic foods, good stuff like that.  And at the bottom of the poster was the kicker: stop buying and consuming so much unneeded stuff.  I laughed again.
In fact, as I completed my last of four transactions in this store, I told the sales clerk how much we enjoyed her store – although there was a certain irony in our spending in a store that is ostensibly promoting consumer restraint.  “That’s OK, you’re supporting a good cause,” she said.  “You’re supporting a local business.”  I hooted again.
The fact of the matter is that sustainability, now gracing the covers of mainstream magazines like Vanity Fair and Newsweek is hot.  And this hot-ness is undeniably great for business.  We’re seeing more and more materials with post-industrial, recycled content including paints and flooring coverings with fewer volatile organic chemicals in them and furniture using alternatives to chromium-tanned leathers.  You name it.  And it’s all good stuff and leading us at least in a better direction.  Right?
But as I look at my newly-purchased ceramic clown, grinning at me with a watermelon in his hands and corn husks popping out of his head, I think I have a pretty good idea that he’s laughing at me and all of this continued buy-buy-buy.  “You haven’t learned anything yet, have you,” it seems to be joking good-naturedly with me,  “You’re not getting out of this mess of overcapacity unless you really change your ways.”