Guatemala photo Greg Lord.
Guatemala in 2004. Father Andrew was deeply affected by a visit
to the church on Lake Atitlan where in 1981 Father Stanley Rother,
an American priest who had served the poor for 13 years, was mur-
dered by right-wing death squads. “Being there, in the place where
one man did so much good” inspired Father Andrew to collaborate
with Mayan weavers in the creation of albs, liturgical vestments
worn by priests during mass. With the help of Guatemala’s Museo
Ixchel del Traje Indigena, a museum devoted to the collection,
preservation and study of traditional Mayan textiles, Father
Andrew began to explore ways to link indigenous Guatemalan
craft with Guatemalan and Salvadoran communities in New York.
He calls the “Albs Experiment” a symbolic effort “to reunify pro-
ducer and consumer in a global economy.” Goods of Conscience,
launched in 2006 with the help of $40,000 in donations, including
one from filmmaker Michael Moore, seemed a logical next step
in the expansion of that concept into a profit-making operation.
In addition to producing the Goods of Conscience brand, Father
Andrew hopes eventually to broaden his partnerships with like-
minded, i.e., sustainability minded, ventures. In one instance, the
designer Natalie Chanin, whose handmade Alabama Chanin brand
clothing is sold at Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman, has utilized
Father Andrew’s indigo-dyeing skills to achieve a deep blue for her
own American-grown and -made organic cottons. Looking beyond
high fashion, Father Andrew envisions possible associations with
universities, such as the University of Notre Dame, a school that
sells the most college-branded product in the u.s. “The university
in particular is where a lot of this dialogue on sustainability takes
place,” he says. And that raises the issue of local production. “Why
can’t a poor parish where a university is benefit from jobs?” he asks.
Father Andrew imagines applying his business model in such neigh-
borhoods. “There are all these grads of Parsons, FIT. Why can’t
that be a first job for them?” he wonders, where they could go into
a small organized workshop, similar to his own at Holy Family, and
help to create and produce branded, limited edition products for
the universities. At the heart of his philosophy—local production
and local consumption—is Father Andrew’s concern with individu-
ality, that “the hand of the maker is there in the artifact.” But the
creation of an identity, he says, “has to have an economically viable
foundation.” Goods of Conscience provides a paradigm for such
an enterprise, in which craft, church and community converge in
away of life that is also a living. +
Andrea D iN oto is a N ew York-based writer on art, craft and design.
Opposite: A detail of
a shibori-style dyeing
of a chi chi shell, a floor-
loom fabric with bone
buttons and green bro-
cade loops in wool from
Gammarelli, the Pope’s
tailor, in Rome.
Clockwise from above:
In the Bronx, Francisco
Portilla completes a first
dip in dyeing indigo and
Enrique Arroyo pre-
pares dye for an order
of Gaucho jeans. In Lake
Atitlan, Guatemala, wo-
men wash Goods of
Conscience shirts with
their laundry.
aug/sep 10 american craft 041
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