Making art with no money

The economic recession has been tough on artists – but it can also be inspiring

ROSEMARY PONNEKANTI; The News Tribune | • Published October 18, 2009

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The recession has been hard on most of us. But for self-employed, freelance artists in any discipline it's become a dire situation. Jobs and sales have gotten fewer and less paid. And finding another job outside the arts often means giving up an integral part of yourself.

Yet, as local actors, musicians and visual artists tell it, they are used to being adaptable in ways the rest of us aren’t.

FEWER JOBS

It sounds like a no-brainer, but in recession times, job opportunities for artists get even slimmer than usual.

“Equity contracts are harder and harder to get,” says Steve Manning. The Tacoman is a member of Actors Equity, which guarantees professional actors a living wage, and has appeared with companies like Theatre Northwest and Harlequin Productions. “Theaters are under tremendous financial strain. Costs are increasing, but ticket prices have to stay affordable. They’re keeping afloat by staging plays with smaller casts, using non-Equity actors. And they’re taking care of their core actors; fewer roles are open to auditions.”

Although he’s always had sideline jobs to make extra money, Manning considered himself a full-time stage actor, supplementing with voice-over work and radio plays. But recently he decided that freelance work was becoming just “too iffy,” and found himself a 9-to-5 business job. It’s a step that’s the kiss of death for actors aiming for roles in bigger theaters in Seattle, which rehearse during the day.

Anders Bolang, another Tacoma Equity actor whose gigs include Stone Soup Theatre in Seattle and Studio 21 of Tacoma, broadens the picture. “It goes beyond the recession,” Bolang says. “Our attitudes towards supporting the arts have changed over the last 10 years – donor bases have gotten tired, people’s priorities have shifted. The recession only exaggerated an unsustainable nonprofit business model.”

But, like Manning, Bolang’s finding it hard to get work. He’s waiting out the next few months fixing up his house, and sometimes gets other carpentry work. Like Manning, his wife has a good job with health insurance for them both, and neither have kids.

There are fewer jobs for musicians also. Those like Kristy Preheim, who plays violin with the Tacoma Symphony and teaches music in the Puyallup School District, are living with the constant threat of school budget cuts. Groups like the Northwest Sinfonietta are programming chamber works that use fewer musicians. String quartets are getting fewer wedding gigs.

Says Preheim: “I would not be able to make much of a living if I didn’t have a teachers’ certificate.”

Private teaching is the other thing that recession-proofs a music career. Janis Upshall, a principal violinist with the Tacoma Symphony, Tacoma Opera and Northwest Sinfonietta, has a stable of 37 students and a two-year waiting list. Her income has been steady, and she supports her teenage daughter as well as buying health insurance for both of them.

“This is a great town for students,” says Upshall, who says her colleagues are similarly secure. “We’re all very lucky.”

FEWER SALES, LOWER PRICES

For visual artists without big public commissions, important gallery representation or grants, selling your work yourself is vital. But, as you’d expect in these times, no-one’s buying much art. Jena Marks, a figurative painter who moved to Tacoma two years ago from a foreign job, has had a hard time getting going. A member of both the Broadway Cooperative on Opera Alley and the 253 Collective in the Brewery District, Marks says she “never really made a ton” of money, but that since the recession, she’s selling hardly anything.

“Earlier, I’d be selling dog or house portraits, people would call back or respond on the Web site,” says Marks. “Not now. I don’t think people are going to walk in and spend $300 on a whim – and yet $300 isn’t much for a painting.” Marks has two children, and although her husband works as a school curriculum facilitator, the family is “just scraping by.”

For some artists, scraping by isn’t an option. Anne deMille Flood, whose detailed color pencil drawings of Tacoma landmarks are familiar from festivals, Borders stores and postcards, is packing up her pencils and looking for another career outside the arts.

“I’ve been doing this since 1997, and at the peak in 2007 I’d be selling around 15 originals a year, at around $500 each,” says Flood, who sells her work at festivals and markets and through café exhibitions. “I was busy doing commissions.” Since then, however, Flood’s sales have dropped 60 per cent, along with her income. She’s reduced the price of originals to $95 and still can’t sell any, though people do buy the $20 prints. As well as the recession, Flood points to customers’ low-price expectations caused by big-box stores manufacturing in bulk.

“It’s really tragic,” says the artist, who spends up to 50 hours on each original. “I can’t get my time back. Being an artist is all or nothing for me. You have to have some down time to be creative, and if you’re out doing the commercial thing all the time you don’t get that. And I can’t afford to spend $1,000 on a show when I can’t even cover the booth fee. I hate to give it up, but...I gave it my best shot. I hope the economy will recover, and I’ll get back to it.”

FUNDING, DONATIONS, GRANTS ALL DOWN

It’s true what individual artists are sensing: The recession is causing arts organizations to suffer, and pass that suffering on. Among the results found in a March 2009 study by the National Endowment for the Arts are that artists are unemployed at twice the rate of other professional workers, and the rate is rising more than in other fields. AMS Planning and Research Group, which tracks performing arts groups, predicts around 10 percent of groups nationwide won’t make it through the recession. A recent report from the Washington State Arts Commission noted that arts groups’ income dropped on all fronts – donations, grants, investment – and though ticket sales are steady, more are coming from free or reduced-price events than ever before.

RECESSIONS ARE EASIER FOR ARTISTS

Yet despite the doom and gloom, there’s a theory (especially around theater blogs) that some artists are in fact weathering the recession better than office types losing their jobs. Why? Because a recession is just an extension of the poorly-paid, insecure freelance life they’re used to.

Steve Manning agrees. In a profession where Equity contracts can run as low as $200 per week for a six-to-eight week show, and where you need at least 20 weeks of work per year to claim Equity health insurance, economic distress isn’t new. “As an actor you have to be thick-skinned, used to looking for jobs and finding creative ways to fit in when you do,” he says. “Actors are very versatile and very resilient, which makes you more impervious to the slings and arrows of a recession.”

Top Equity jobs in Seattle can, of course, pay up to $1,000 a week. But, says Bolang, “the number of actors in Seattle – not Tacoma – who make over $20,000 a year from acting can be counted on two hands. You learn to augment your income.”

The ability of artists to weather the recession with creativity is borne out by recent research by local funding/resource group Artist Trust. Executive director Fidelma McGinn says the study finds that “although artists are certainly feeling the negative effects of the unsteady economy, many are well-versed in surviving economic hardship and are persevering creatively.”

THE UPSIDE? CREATIVITY

And there may even be an upside to the recession, for artists who can stick it out.

“Without the pressure to sell, or do a certain style or medium, you’re free to follow your creative whim,” says Jena Marks. “It’s good to stretch your wings. And if one day I can’t afford the $200 per month studio fee at the Collective, I’ll just take my things and set up in my garage. If you’re a doctor and you lose your job, you can’t just up and do surgery in your home. If you’re an artist, you’re always an artist. I will always do this whether I’m making a living or not.”

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568

rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com