Karuna Village Moving Away From Online Sales

Much planning has been going on at the Fair Trade Cafe over Karuna Village over the last couple of months. The online art sales have been disappointing and with Michele's move to the cafe full time we want to place much more emphasis on sales of fair trade fine art and crafts from the cafe itself. We shall still host monthly exhibitions of local artist's work but Karuna Village art will be given much more wall space than was previously given.

In the end, people like to see the art they are buying. It is very difficult to get a real appreciation of the quality of a piece of art from a picture alone. As a consequence we shall be discontinuing the online art sales and selling exclusively from the Fair Trade Cafe. In place of the online shop we are going to upgrade this blog with a brand new, professionally designed blog, courtesy of Dave Kellett of dudeblogyourbusiness.com. The blog will then become the online presence for Karuna Village. We are hoping this transition will be completed by the beginning of November.

That is not to say that there won't be any online art for sale. Blogs are clever things these days and we are looking at one particular widget that will allow individual items to be sold. One line we think might be suitable for such online sale is the Limited Edition Print range we are currently negotiating for. More on that soon.

Negotiating a Deal with Nicaraguan Artists

With greatful thanks to Dolly at the Nicaraguan Cultural Alliance (NCA), we have been contacted by 3 artists from Nicaragua interested in exhibiting their art on the Karuna Village website. I had seen some truly outstanding paintings on the NCA website and approached Dolly with the idea of seeking to do a limited edition print series of selected artists works.

Subsequently I have received an email from Carmen Garcia, a Nicaraguan artist of 25 years standing who works in the primitivism style, (an example of her work is shown above), who, along with two of her colleagues, Santos Medina and Luis Verela, are very interested in the idea. The sizes they are working on are 120cm x 80 and 60 x 50 cm, and mainly oil or acrylic on canvas.

Currently, Carmen is looking for a printer locally who can undertake Giclee printing. The idea is to create a limited edition print run of selected paintings, with between 100 - 250 prints, each signed and numbered by the artist, and selling for around $250 per print. These are stunning works of art and certainly deserve a wider audience. I think there will be a lot of interest once these prints become available. Watch this space, as they say!

Fair Trade Resource Network

If you want to find out more about the world of fair trade and what it can do for people across the planet, you might want to check out the Fair Trade Resource Network. They describe themselves as an "information hub designed to grow the fair trade movement". Obviously, we at Karuna Village applaud their efforts and wish to support their work in any way we can - even if it just by giving them a plug here!

The Fair Trade Network was founded in 1999 and is a nonprofit organisation. Its primary purpose is education of the buying public - "helping people to better understand the impact of their buying decisions". If you are a fair trade outlet, or thinking of providing fair trade goods, they have a wide variety of resources that can help you in getting your fair trade message across to your audience.

One of the key elements of Karuna Village was that we didn't just want to sell high quality art on a fair trade basis, we wanted to tell the story behind the art. Think of the value you get as an art buyer over buying some derivative department store 'decor', when you get a personal story, belief, culture, and often a mythology, as well as a unique piece of fine art. Plus, you are helping to support an economy where often there are few alternatives to earn a living for the people involved. That's what I love about the internet - it gives a global market to the remotest peoples. How great is that!

Embroidery Painting

This is another speciality of Vietnam - embroidery painting. Embroidery art has been around for over 700 years and the northern provinces of Ninh Binh and Ha Tay are particularly renown for their embroidery skills. These artists literally paint with different coloured embroidery threads. This particular piece is my favorite - it reminds me of the lush green woodlands of the Forest of Dean in England where I lived before coming to Arizona. This is a large piece at 15" x 23" and would have taken the artist over a month to complete! Of course, a quality piece like this one is not cheap - this piece will set you back some $700, but there are great variety of subjects, sizes and prices. Check out our selection on the Karuna Village website!

Fish Painting Brings Good Fortune

Every wanted a fish tank but didn't have the space? Well how about one of these on your wall? It is another example of Vietnamese Lacquer art. In my last post I showed one of the more modern styles of Vietnamese Lacquer art. This example is more traditional and might well be found in any Vietnamese or Chinese home or restaurant.

It is a stunning piece of work, the fish being made of mother of pearl inlaid on beautiful vermilion lacquer. This is a new piece and was added to the Karuna Village gallery - www.karunavillage.com - only a few days ago. It is said in Vietnam, that if you have a fish painting hanging on the wall of your house, it can bring good fortune onto the household. Personally, I always feel fortunate when I have great art adorning my walls. What a great piece this would make for a bathroom!

Modern Style Vietnamese Lacquer Art

We are offering a range of very affordable lacquer paintings from Vietnam. What makes these particularly interesting is that they are a modern take on a very traditional, 2000 year old, Vietnamese technique - lacquer painting.
Lacquers are made from resins harvested from the Rhus Succedanea Tree from the Phu Tho Province of northern Vietnam.

A full description of the process can be found on the Karuna Village website, but it is a long and complex process that can take between 75 days to over 100 days for some pieces, and involves the application of of materials like mother of pearl, egg shell and gold leaf.

These modern versions use many of the same techniques and are all themed around the universal beauty of women and nature. They seem to be a particularly popular item at the moment - check them all out on the Karuna Village website by clicking on this link - click here.

Visit the Fair Trade Cafe

For those of you who happen to live in Phoenix or, indeed, are planning to visit the city, you can see a small selection of the fair trade fine art sold by Karuna Village at the Fair Trade Cafe, located at the junction of Roosevelt and 1st Ave. We are currently showing a selection of art from Vietnam.

Cafe owner, Michele White, who also founded Karuna Village, has done a wonderful job in creating a superb venue for local arts including both monthly wall art displays of local artists' work as well as poetry and music performances - see the Fair Trade Cafe website (azfairtrade.com) for details. Not only that but you also get a great cup of fair trade coffee and great food while you are there as well!

The cafe is also a participating venue of the monthly Phoenix Art Walk and Michele is very much part of the initiative to improve the Copper Square area of the city where the cafe is located. 

Fair Trade for Huichol Art

Shortly after my last post I came across this video on YouTube. It is a great example of the kind of organisation that Karuna Village wants to work with to help them fulfill their aim to help indigenous groups like the Huichol get a fair price for their art. The Konshak Foundation was formed to help the Huichol Indians to market their art at a fair market price, and to "create new fusion of contemporary art".

The video very succinctly highlights the plight of the Huichol and how such organisations as the Konshak Foundation can be of help without being overtly intrusive. This is a great example of what amazing good the internet is capable of facilitating - a subject I would like to delve into further some time.
Enjoy!

Origin of the Idea

Photo by Dave Kellet

The germ of the idea for setting up a fair trade fine art business began back in November 2005 when Naomi and I were on a short cruise holiday along the Mexican Riviera. One of our ports of call was Puerto Vallarta where the ship docked for the day and we went into town to explore. Puerto Vallarta has a very good market, and that is where we headed for. We discovered a little shop at the edge of the market which sold Huichol art, which consisted of brightly coloured 'yarn paintings' and beadwork. I'll go into more detail about the art produced by the Mexican Huichol Indians in a later post, but suffice it to say we were immediately drawn to this artwork.

Earlier on in our trip we had attended a timeshare presentation, for which 'torture' we were compensated with a gift of $100 cash. Well, it happened that the particular piece of Huichol art we were drawn to cost exactly $100, so we figured what better use could we put that money to than to purchase this wonderful piece? (As illustrated in the picture).

We chatted with the propietor, Ricardo, and it turned out that the shop was part of a nonprofit organisation set up to promote the art of the Huichol Indians so that they had both a source of income in what were very poor mountain villages and, at the same time keeping alive their unique folk art traditions. The thing that interested me at the time was when he showed us photographs of of the villages and some of the artists at work. The Huichol Indians live in round huts. I was, at that time, involved in a project building replica round houses of the British Iron Age and so this was, to me, an amazing coincidence. Ricardo said that if we were ever in Puerto Vallarta again he would arrange a visit to the Huichol villages and introduce us to the artists. We vowed then and there that we would, at some point in the future, take him up on his kind and generous offer.

Our thoughts then were that this was great art and that there would be a great market for this quality of work back in the US and Britain. That thought remained in the back of our minds and thus was born the germ of the idea to set up a fair trade fine art business.

New Australian Aboriginal Painting

A great new piece of art came up for sale today. This is a great example of why I wanted to set up Karuna Village - Aboriginal artists from Australia produce some of the best indigenous art in the world, and this is a perfect example - a painting very much tied in with the aboriginal beliefs and landscape.

The piece is by artist Paddy Japaljarri Stewart.

The title of the piece is Ngarlu Jukurrpa (Love Story Dreaming)

It is Acrylic on Linen, executed 2005, and is 122cm x 91cm in size.

The Dreaming site of Miinypa or Yanyilingi is Ngarlu, meaning "red rock", country east of Yuendumu.

Jungarrayi man called Lintipilinti who lived at Ngarlu fell in love with a Napangardi woman, a tabu relation as the women was his skin mother in-law. This relation is forbidden to him under the Warlpiri skin system. Lintipilinti fell in love with the Napangardi women when he saw her.  Lintipilinti was very impressed and aroused by her beauty and began to wonder how he could win the Napangardi. He went to Ngarlu and made hair string for her, singing as he worked.

Paddy has depicted the hair string spindel 'wirigy' by the 4 black shapes in the corners of this painting. The Napangardi women could not sleep and felt strange in her stomach, she felt sick. She realised that someone was singing for her. A little bird visited her every day taking Jungarrayi’s songs to her.

That bird can still be heard sometimes in the bush - It helps people find certain bush foods. It also talks to people when they are lonely, sad or in danger. Lines on the canvas represent the force of the song pulling the Napangardi women to Lintipilinti. When the two lovers met again and made love they turned to stone, as their relationship was tabu in Warlpiri skin system. The place where they turn to stone can still be seen at Ngarlu today.

The story behind the art is as important to us as the piece itself. If you re interested in this or similar kinds of art then visit our online gallery at www.karunavillage.com

Welcome to the Karuna Village Blog

Hello everyone! My name is Jasper and this is the first of a regular blog on the trials and triumphs of my new Fair Trade Fine Art site www.karunavillage.com Karuna Village is a nonprofit agency.

I am British and have lived in USA for just over two years - just in case American readers find some of the spelling slightly different! 

The eventual aim is to bring you the stories of the people behind the art that is on offer on the Karuna Village site. It is still very early days for the site but, eventually, my wife (Naomi) and I plan to travel to the individual countries to develop relations with artists personally and, of couse establish relations with new artists. Both Naomi and I are keen travelers and travelling was very much part of the plan when the idea for selling fair trade fine art came up. Telling the stories of the artists and their culture is a very important part of what we are trying to do at Karuna Village and, where possible, we provide printed information about the art piece and information about the artist, their background and their culture with each piece of art we sell.

At the moment, we are not in a position to travel to each and every country to obtain our art and so are dealing with several intermediary groups and suppliers. However, we only work with groups and suppliers that operate on a fair trade basis, and we only offer you the very best of the art we come across. But, I have to say that there is a lot of very good art out there, and most of it is very affordable. Please feel free to browse the site and I hope you will support our mission to educate the community about fair trade and its benefits to our artists and their communities by buying a piece of art.