My First Job: The Velvet Gopher

If you’ve ever opened a Fingerhut or Seventh Avenue catalog to find a page of mandalas and dream catchers staring back at you and found yourself wondering, “Who the hell makes this shit?” I have a story for you. If you’ve ever walked into a Flying J or Petro truck stop and marveled at a particularly engaging velvet painting hanging amongst the racks tee-shirts emblazoned with howling wolves or an “End of the Trail” theme, I know from whence they came. Because from 1994-2004, my father was the Vice-President of the company that made them, and for three years I worked as his gofer. I worked at Chico Arts– the original mass-market manufacturer of velvet paintings and Native American-style kitsch.

Chico Arts, named after the owner’s first wife, Chico, was founded in 1969 by Doyle Hardin, and made it’s name mass marketing portraits of Elvis and landscapes, and eventually went into the business of importing Mexican blankets and making Native American art. In the 70’s and early 80’s, Hardin’s craftsmen were Native American. He hand-picked talent from the local Tigua tribe, and employed them to produce real mandalas-leather and sheepskin hand-cut and quilted patterns on stiff leather shields, flanked by sheepswool braids, and actual eagle feathers (before they were a protected species). The originals were beautiful, expensive, and each was hand-signed by the Tigua artist who made it. My father was his banker during my parent’s first stint in El Paso (1974-1981) and he had a few which adorned the walls of his bank office and the stairwell of our home. It was during this era that Dusty Henson (owner of El Paso Saddleblanket- a mercantile-cum-tourist-attraction) worked for Doyle, and learned the trade.

Company lore goes that the Tigua Nation was none to happy with Doyle appropriating the work of it’s local artists off Res land without paying dues to the Tribe, and filed an EEOC complaint. The Tribe won, and Hardin moved most of the manufacturing of the Native American-style goods to a small shop in Juárez, and kept finishing, velvet production, and administration/logistics in the States.

Each Chico Arts product, from the late 80’s till today bears a distinctive tag: an image of his third wife- Elvira, who is mestizo from Chihuahua- bent over some sort of textile in an approximation of a native craftsman in Native American dress. He was able to argue for years after moving operations to Juárez that since most Mexicans are mestizo, they are Native American. The argument fell flat in the mid-90’s when a Native American lobbying and advocacy group (I believe it was called the League of Native American Nations), was able to successfully sue the company for misrepresentation. After the lawsuit, every Chico Arts tag thereafter read in bold letters: NOT A NATIVE AMERICAN PRODUCT.

I guess the first time I met Doyle was shortly after my parents moved back to El Paso in 1988. My father was working at a local bank, and Doyle moved his accounts back with my dad, and we’d hang out on his ranch/menagerie in Horizon City, while Doyle tried to convince my dad to leave banking and work for him. His hard sell finally worked in 1993 when my dad left banking after blowing the whistle on and testifying against his boss in a massive money-laundering/check writing scandal, and my father vowed never to work in the industry again. My dad was given a comparable salary and benefits package, and he went to work as VP modernizing the company- having computer networks installed for payroll, invoicing, and inventory, digitizing accounts, and most importantly- expanding the market from small highway trading posts and tschoschke shops to catalogs, large truckstops, and a worldwide market hungry for kitsch.

I was there on the sidelines as this all happened. I started working there on the weekends for allowance money when I was thirteen years-old, doing the shit most thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen year-olds do at a family business: tidying dad’s office, typing and mailing over-due letters, helping him build shelving systems, stuffing envelopes, and filing. During the summers we integrated our family vacations with trade-show schedules, and dad and I would set up and work the booth while my mom spent the day shopping, chatting with other vendors or, in the case of Vegas, making back our out-of pocket at the tables.

My father started booking international trade fairs as Chico’s European clientele gained momentum. The Germans and the English had the biggest appetite for Southwestern kitsch, and so dad booked the two most significant retail trade shows in Europe: the bi-annual Retail Trade Fairs at the NEC in Birmingham and MesseFrankfurt in Frankfurt am Main.  My first trip to Europe was working at the NEC when I was 15, and I loved it. One of Chico’s best clients in UK, Roy, made all the arrangements for our stay in the West Midlands. We stayed at a resort hotel- Hinkley Island in Hinkley, Leicestershire. Mom slept-in to catch up on jet-lag while dad and I waited for customs to release any items with feathers or rabbit fur, and set up the booth. Roy took mom and I on day trips, and after the day trips, I was dropped off at the venue to help dad, while mom was taken shopping on Birmingham’s High Street.

Our booth was sandwiched in between the US Coordinator’s Craft Service table and Yankee Candle. I don’t care if you hate Yankee Candle’s candles-I hung out with the owner, Michael Kittredge, for hours. I was, as most young goth girls are known to do, learning to make my own candles, incense, and soap. He gave me instruction on how to do it properly on a home stove, gave me recipes, told me how to extract my own oils, and (with my father’s blessing) bought me my first pint of Guiness from the venue’s pub. He was such a nice, supportive man, who indulged a precocious teenager, and every time I see a display of Yankee Candles, I think of him. Oh, and he also broke up a fight between an English vendor and one of the US vendors who were both acting like massive dicks at the venue’s pub.

I started officially working on the payroll when I was 16. I have never seen the Juárez office, where the majority of the manufacturing took place, but the original Chico Arts’ US building was a mid-century brick office structure with attached warehouse facilities embedded in a factory district on the East-Central area of town near the Airport. Two blocks away from Chico’s original location on Commerce and Humble is the Tony Lama factory, and a bowling alley where I used to shoot pool after my shift was over. That summer I went full time, and I was shuffled between front of house and back of house. When I wasn’t filing, invoicing, and on the phone sweetly convincing a certain trading post owner in Arizona to pay the fuck up, I was in the back attaching feathers and beads to dream catchers, and boxing them for their future destinations.

The back had three different departments: finishing, packing/shipping, and painting. My favorite place to get sent to was the painting department, where background colors were screen printed on velvet, and a cabal of professional painters did detail work amongst palates of stretched velvet canvases piled 8 feet high, and finished works divided by theme. End of the Trail, the Aztec Sacrifice, and God Bless the Trucker, are three themes that come to mind. During the time that I worked at Chico, the company was sued by The Velvet Elvis Company, who had gained the sole rights to produce Elvis’ likeness on velvet.

That summer, I was not in the best state. I’d rather not get into all the gory details, but let’s just say the vices of the border had a firm grip on me. But, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one doing bumps in the bathroom.

Like any family-owned/family-operated workplace, Chico was rife with workplace drama. There was gossip aplenty, personal conflicts that started at the breakfast table and migrated to office, and on at least one occasion, a fist-fight on the loading dock.

After I finished a rehab program (yeah, it was bad) and started school, I was back on a half-time schedule, going in before and after school. Mom passed, and I graduated a year-and-a-half early, and the last few months of my employment at Chico were spent at trade fair, again at the NEC in Birmingham, and MesseFrankfurt.

Highlights of that run:

Reiner- the German-born attaché for New Mexico’s Department of Cultural Affairs, who had a booth devoted to New Mexico’s regional wines. He was just a delight- dapper and boozy. He was a big fan of New Mexico’s Rieslings.

 

My hotel room at the Arabella Sheraton.

Being able to legally order myself a glass of wine or beer in Germany.

Hanging out with the owner of Native Scents- an incense and tea company from Taos, NM. Mrs. Savinelli took me out for my first taste of Thai food (Tom Yung Gai). We checked out a few German head shops after lunch, where I bought a couple of Czech glass bowls for my boyfriend.

Drunk German vendors singing folksongs on the bus back to the hotels at the end of the day.

Rowdy venue pubs.

Samples from other vendors.

The ridiculous amount of great vinyl I bought at Reddington’s Rare Records.

Lowlights:

Being asked by several vendors from the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia if my father was my husband. Seriously.

I don’t need to tell you that a Comfort Inn in Birmingham is nothing like a US one.

After the last trade show, I moved out of my dad’s and went to work graveyard at Denny’s, and then at MCI as a directory assistance operator, before landing another gopher job at the El Paso Times. My dad and Doyle had a falling-out in 2003, my dad was fired, and Doyle eventually sold Chico to Elvira’s cousins if I’m not mistaken. Chico now lives on as Chico Arts II. You can still find its dream catchers, velvet paintings, and laser printed mandalas at truck stops around the West. The next time you find yourself picking up water and a pack of cigarettes at a Petro and run across one of those signature tags, you can think of it’s brief moment in the sun as the pinnacle of American kitsch, or, if you prefer my mom telling my dad, “No, I’m not letting you hang that shit in my house.”

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