Support Local Artists!

Today Mary and I were talking about art, how we approach it (take your art, not yourself, seriously), how others seem to approach it , and the short shrift it gets most of the time.

Art, I think, is the first truly human impulse. Back 20, 25,000 years ago, when people had acquired shelter and food, the first thing they did was to paint on the cave walls, and shape bones, wood and stone into images, calendars, totems, musical instruments. Art is necessary.

So why is art so often shoved aside? I agree that basic needs come first, but art is important. Learning about art helps with perception and critical thinking. Art history is interwoven with the history of mankind. Yet arts education is the first to have its funding cut in schools, while athletics are boosted. Public funding for arts is often not only marginalized, but attacked as wasteful and wrong.

Perhaps it is because art is so subjective. One whose idea of art is a calendar by Thomas Kinkaid might bristle at the idea of his/her tax money going toward a modernistic steel sculpture. An Abstract Expressionist might disdain exposure and praise heaped upon someone who emulates Grandma Moses. There is a group that I know of adamantly opposed to all art from the Impressionists onward, and some of the opinions expressed on their website are downright scary. Stylistic schisms aside, I don't think there are many in the arts community in general who think that arts are adequately funded.

Art is everywhere, even though it may not be apparent at first. Art and design - graphic design and industrial design - surround us, fill our homes and workplaces. The lamp on the desk, the carpet underfoot, the toaster, the stapler, the thermostat on the wall, the dishes in the cupboard... teacups and cell phones and letter-racks and picture frames - all are designed by artists. It's not just paintings and sculpture - it's everything around us that is not of 100% strictly utilitarian design. An engineer designed the water pump, but an artist designed the faucet.

Anyway...

For people like Mary and me, though art is deeply important to us, there is no way we can support ourselves with it. I paint and draw; Mary makes exquisite stained glass from original designs, and creates delightful, whimsical paintings, which might fall under"surrealism", but are actually kind of hard to categorize. She also knits scarves and hats from salvaged yarn (unraveling old wool sweaters), and sews purses and bags from salvaged fabrics. They are imaginatively designed and attractive.

Last year I made a handful of hand-painted notecards - overlapping leaves of maples, birch, beech and sumac, painted in their bright fall colors. I made templates after real leaves, traced them on the cards and outlined each leaf in ink before applying glazes of watercolor. Each card took probably close to 2 hours to create. So far I have sold only 6 of them, for a total of $40. Go to any card shop, grocery store, drugstore, bookshop, and there are dozens of cards for $3 each, mass-produced, printed in their thousands. How can I hope to sell these little art-quality cards for anything approaching their real value?

A few years ago I did a pen-and-ink drawing, mostly pointillism, depicting a group of standing stones. It took probably between 25 and 30 hours of work, spread over 3 months, to complete. If I were to charge a living wage per hour for this work, I might have to put a price on it in the thousands of dollars - which, of course, no one would ever pay.

Mary took a painting of 2 pink lady's-slippers, translated it to a form she could cut in glass, and using a mix of new and vintage stained glass, crafted a striking window. She worked on it for many hours, with the most painstaking care in selecting, cutting, grinding, foiling and soldering the dozens of pieces. She is asking $1600 for it, and has not gotten even a sniff of interest. How can she compete with the made-in-China suncatchers and pre-cut stained-glass kits available at the local discount craft store?

A friend of Mary's makes hand-knit sweaters using wool from the sheep she raises. She has the sheep sheared, and the wool spun and dyed to order. She knits by hand sweaters of intricate design, and offers them for sale for between $200-$400. At craft fairs, people may admire her work, but bypass her for the people selling sweaters knit on machines, in yarn bought at Wal-Mart for $1.50 a skein. How can she hope to compete? (She can't, of course; she had to sell most of her flock of sheep, unable to afford to support her craft.)

There is something fundamentally wrong here. People flock to farmers' markets and food co-ops and buy locally-produced produce, eggs and meat. Yet would they choose the work of a local artist or craftsperson over some less-expensive product shipped in from afar? Has anyone really tried to find out?

"Buy Local" is a rallying cry heard often lately, as people become more conscious of their food. I am certainly on board with that, but why is there not as well-marketed a movement for local arts? Why not pay me $7.50 for one of my one-of-a-kind painted cards (cheap at 5 times the price, if you think about it) instead of going to the chain card shop and paying $3 for a mass-produced, printed-in-China card? Why not pay Mary $50 for one of her hand-made suncatchers, and forgo the cheap imported chintzy glass ornament, one of a run of 20,000, made in some soulless factory in a foreign country?

What we need is an arts promotion and marketing movement on a par with the local and organic farming movement. We need to be able to promote and support locally sourced, designed and produced original art and fine handcrafts (no crocheted toilet-paper covers, please!). No cheap materials, no kits, no designs copied from pattern books. Perhaps the local arts/handcraft movement can pair with the local food movement and have Food and Art festivals.

Is there any reason not to promote and support local arts as vigorously as a local berry farm, cheesemaker or bakery? Of course there isn't. So why doesn't someone do something about it? Why don't we do it ourselves?

This year I will...

This year I will... Ok, in reality, I will look at this post in a few months and laugh.

This year I will...

--Move into my studio. The woodstove is in the cottage, and I have only to move in my stuff, paint the skungy back wall, and start painting pictures. Spread out my braided rug, set up my drawing table, get my desk moved in, put up some bookshelves, get the phone line connected and buy another wireless router. Maybe get a studio easel, unlike the wobbly aluminum one I bought last year, which is really more for plein air work anyway. I've wanted the work space for years - now move in, and work!

--Learn to use my oil paints.

--Create stock in inexpensive artwork to sell at craft fairs and shows. Little watercolors of flowers, shells, rocks, fruit. I could even bring myself to paint pears, though I don't want to paint pears because EVERYBODY and his dog paints pears. Create a few designs for notecards, and have them printed up. Sell the prints for $3 each, the originals for $25 each. Maybe get an Etsy account.

--Enter a few juried shows. Why not? As long as the jury fee isn't outrageous, it can do no harm, and might open a few eyes to my stuff. I'll enter the South Burlington Art Hop again, and arrange months in advance to get that weekend off so I can actually attend the opening. I'm sick of my true avocation taking a back seat to waiting on people who insist on asking if there are two pillow shams in this pair.

--Experiment. Try abstracts. Finish the abstract "Walking With Nick." Go to galleries, learn about more art and artists.

--Get an agent. Not for the artwork; for some reason, writers ought to have agents, and artists ought not to have agents. Don't ask me why. Anyway, get an agent and start trying to publish some writing. Keep trying.

--Write more. Write more. Watch less TV, unplug the internet. Write. Write. and then write.

--Go places. Follow through on the plans to visit old graveyards in Massachusetts. Go to Shelburne Museum, Bennington Museum. Hike up Lye Brook.

--Allow myself to miss a few ball games. Why miss a sunset just to see another dull 4-2 win over the Orioles?

--Be patient. Count blessings. Be thankful. Be helpful. Be accommodating. Don't get mad when my plans are knocked awry by other responsibilities. Take a breath, let it go, move on.

--Beware of having expectations. Have something to look forward to, but don't be crushed in the event of a change of plans. Go day to day, which is really all any of us do, anyway.