If you ever imagined running a local art gallery in the hinterlands, you might want to read this. Gallery Muir has been open for almost six months now, and a retrospective look is in order. Or was it Bob Dylan who said “Don’t Look Back”?

What we didn’t factor in was stubbornness. If you’ve got an ounce of it up front, you’ll be lugging a pound of it half a year later. This gallery biz is a long slow process, as it turns out. The heavy question is: do we have the legs?

At the onset we got lots of buzz and press, and a gathering of the tribe, which was very gratifying (and great fun), but any illusions about market frenzy were quickly quashed. Somehow I had imagined all we had to do was put my new work out there and folks would flock to buy it, at any price. Dream on.

If this was about commerce, Gallery Muir would barely get a passing grade. In six months we have sold six sculptures, one mask, four signboard paintings, and a scad of books, postcards, notecards, posters and prints. Not bad for a start-up, perhaps (and about a break-even for covering expenses). We have yet to show a profit, however. This month I have, at least, been making wages doing colored drawings of Bath on commission.

Sure there are mitigating factors. This has been the worst year in memory for art sales in Maine, we’re told. A rainy summer, an anxious electorate, a soft economy, and an unlikely location all stand accused. But I suspect this was a case of false expectations.

In the past I’ve always sold everything I made, toot sweet. On street corners, at fairs, and in other gallery shows my work was priced to go. I had a good sense of the current price resistance levels, and preferred immediate cash flow to potential fortune. And one advantage of low prices was that anyone could play. My friends and neighbors were my customers.

But the work evolved, and the times changed. Spending ten hours making a wooden toy is different from spending ten days composing a toy portrait, and my prices had to rise. But I managed to leap that hurdle by doing commissions. Patrons are much more willing to dig deep for a unique portrait piece, and the work was pre-sold, which made the risk bearable. Over the 80’s and 90’s, as inflation drove up the cost of living, my prices doubled,. What had been a $500 portrait became a $1000 portrait. I wasn’t getting rich, but between us we were getting by.

The realities of a provincial economy are different than up-along in urban America. Making $10/hour doing portrait commissions would be ludicrous in Manhattan, but it’s a viable subsistence on the lunatic fringe, and enough to support an art jones in mid-coast Maine – in a two income household.

But too much press did me in. That splendid “Made in Maine” feature Mark Ireland produced about Bryce the Toymaker won a documentary TV prize, and Maine Public Television ran it every time they had a programming hole. My phone rang off the hook. The story was that the little old toymaker could take all the details you wanted to give him about a person, and put them together in a funny mechanical portrait. True enough, as far as it went. What the show didn’t say was that composing symbolic portraits, even as whimsical toys, can be revealing. Particularly if the toymaker is looking more deeply at the inner material.

I stopped pleasing my customers. I’ve always had the gift of saying too much. Now my toy portraits weren’t just amusing. They might be telling. And that hadn’t been the customer’s expectation. They wanted light-hearted, and I had no control over what symbolic message comes out. The commission path had petered out in the briar patch, Brer Fox.

So I backed away from commissions. I didn’t go out soliciting more portraits, and those that came word of mouth were sufficient to keep me churning the material, and putting gas in the truck. Then, thanks to Leo’s largesse (a small inheritance), we could take a breather from hand-to-mouth and plot a new course.

I began to work on the LOCAL MYTHS and the AMERICAN ICONS, and the house started to fill up with symbolism and mechanical history. Which brings us to the opening of Gallery Muir.

But it means I’ve doubled my prices, in Bath, and the works aren’t commissions. So I’m reaching out for a new audience, or trying to interest my old patrons in a new kind of work. At twice the price. No wonder my expectations were excessive.

Even so, I hoped that images of universal themes would speak to everyman, and that certainly seems true. Although I might add everywoman and child. Maybe that’s just the demographic of walk-ins. There are more women on the street looking in shop windows, and kids tend to drag their parents in to check out the carvings. If our intent was to open a window on the symbolic imagination, we’ve had a stunning success

Folks have come in to “commune with the spirits,” and “cool my head.” I’ve heard discourse on the nature of the universe from six-year-olds, while their wide-eyed parents gape in the background. Folks have told me mythic tales out of their own encounters. The images are doing their work. And wasn’t that the original intent? To show the work to a new public?

It’s a kind of shell game. You pretend you are opening a store to sell a product, and you count the cash to see if you are successful. But what you are really doing is cultivating the creative conversation in a provincial city. Finding an audience for mythic sculpture. A local art gallery is a place where you step out of the commercial road and rub shoulders with the archetypes. Maybe that’s the point. Which shell is the pea under?

But how do you make it pay? Peggy says we should have a sign that says “Support your local arts: buy something.” Or should we have a donations can? Ask for tithing? Other places we go for culture contact -- cafes, restaurants, book stores – we drop a dime, pay a little extra for the conviviality. Why not in an art gallery? Buy a postcard. Send it to a friend.

I feel awkward even thinking about cash as a quid pro quo for providing a haven of symbols. The mindsets are so different. There’s shopping and there’s symbolic introspection. Peggy says, “So? Tickets to the MFA are $22 a pop.” It’s a commercial culture. Communing with the spirits don’t butter no parsnips.

There’s the dilemma. It’s a joy to have a place to share our creative imaginations, show our friend’s work, have discourse on the artistic vision. It’s a great gallery space, and even a good place to draw and paint, which Peggy and I do all the while we’re there. But it’s an expensive atelier. The expectation in a storefront is steady commerce. And we ain’t got it.

Worse yet, half the men who come in are full of commercial advice. We’re obviously a failing business, and they have just the cure. So you have to face the chamber of commerce conversation daily. Not that the advice is bad. Just a constant discord. Peggy says I ought to post the sign I have in my workshop: “Don’t tell me what to do, and I won’t tell you where to go.”

So what’s new? The inner life and the outer life are always in conflict. That’s the artist’s tale. When the creative energy is moving, or the vibe is strong and our hearts high, who cares about the gelt? If an art gallery is about enriching the community, just staying open is enough. If the point is to show a body of work, Gallery Muir is a dandy.

But I’m in fugue, or is that fug? Some days it seems too much of my creative energy is going to pump up sales, produce cash and carry items, enhance the buzz, smooze the biz. Does the constant commercial pressure ground out the magic making? Shouldn’t I be spending my limited creative resources doing what I do best? Making sawdust?

I protest too much. All my friends and neighbors have come in and enjoyed the work. Everyone has bought a book, or cards, or made a gesture of support. Most days there is a parade of fascinating folks who bring their own magic to share. What more could you ask for?

Maybe it’s too much to ask for the world to come rushing to our door to buy obscure symbolic sculpture at up-town gallery prices. As I heard one kid say to his father: “Two thousand dollars?! I don’t get it.”