Sagadahoc Stories 138: 9/26/05
Fezzle in Summer
 The First Check [Photo by Dave Zahn] |
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE! Another provincial art gallery bites the dust. We are closing Gallery Muir due to lack of interest. Principal, too, for that matter. Although we might sacrifice all our principles for a little cash flow. We haven’t sold enough artwork to pay the rent in six months. Enough is enough. So what’s the story? |
| Looking back at my previous commentaries I see that I had it right the first time. This experiment was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong work at the wrong price. But this is our place and time, and the necessary work of my hands and eyes, at gallery rates. So it was worth the try. I also said we’d need infinite patience to make it happen in Bath, and we ran out of oomph. |  Galleryman (ex) [Photo by Michael Heskanen] |
| There is a bigger picture. From the Maine coast to Mendocino, from Newburyport to Newberry Street, art sales are dramatically down, and established galleries are going belly-up like pogies without oxygen. Antique dealers and fine furniture makers, boatbuilders and other artist-craftsmen report a crash in demand. Except for high-end art investors and the circus of Southeby, the art biz is crying for mercy. I’m told. |
| For all the buzz of a reviving economy, this country is still running scared. You can’t have a fear bubble without frightening folks. An investment banker told me that the well-heeled buy art when they are making capital gains. There’s nothing like a growth economy to feed the arts. But when gains are grim and the economy is anxious even the wealthy are hesitant to indulge in art. As if art is an indulgence. |
| It seems inexplicable that true patrons of art who can always afford to buy work that speaks to them would hesitate in times of economic uncertainty. Are artists somehow at fault? Aren’t we telling the necessary truths in a moment of confusion? Or does cultural anxiety drown out the inner conversation? Is creative soul work and the pursuit of beauty just a frivolity to be indulged when times are flush and there are no IEDs by the roadside? Just because red flags have scared away the market bulls, should we be afraid to face the minotaur within? I’d have thought art was more necessary in a dark time. |
| Or has the creative imperative moved beyond established galleries, away from professional artists, and into the hands of everyman? Frame shops can’t keep up with the work. Here in Maine everyone is an artist. Folks on the street aren’t buying paintings by other daubers, they are slinging paint themselves, and taking it to the framer. Richard Lee, the papermaker, calls it art sprawl. Why pay hundreds of dollars for a painting, when you can do it yourself? The boomers are retiring to the coast, and finally making that art they always wanted to. |
Never
too old| Ain’t that grand? Making art opens your eyes. Creating art shares the gift of esthetic perception. The more the merrier, you’d think. And there is a glut of new galleries. The Muirs weren’t the only ones to open shop this year. Maine Street Brunswick is lined with just opened galleries, full of splendid work. There’s no shortage of new art being made. It’s just that no one seems willing, or able, to buy it. Is the impulse to art so divergent from the commercial imperative in this backwater that we will be up to our necks in creativity and our gas tanks all empty? |
| The regional economy might have something to do with the debacle on Centre Street. Summer was late coming again this year, and we didn’t start seeing tourists and summer people on the street in Bath until August. Only in early September were the merchants reporting much transient sales activity. The price of gas hasn’t helped summer business along the coast, and the engines of our local economy are sputtering. |
| Bath Iron Works (the shipyard) is still laying off workers as the Navy reduces its predicted growth, and Brunswick Naval Air Station has just been slated for closure. So there will be thousands fewer jobs hereabout, and the ripples spread out. But the real estate and building boom, fuel by ex-urban escapees, continues unabated. Wouldn’t you think those fromaways would need some sculpture for their trophy houses on the shore? Or is the landscape itself enough? Who needs a carved seal when you can buy a kayak and go paddle among them? |
| But the big picture doesn’t explain it all. National news or regional rumble, the story on Centre Street is still about the work we’ve shown and the audience that has seen it. |
| In the end you make art because you are compelled to. If I don’t create something every day I feel numb. Something there is inside that needs out. I may trick myself into believing that this is a business. That I’m painting local landscapes because people will buy them, or doing a commission carving so someone can give a special gift. But these are just excuses to justify what I have to do. Create. |
 [Photo by Dave Zahn] |
Sometimes I suspect it’s all vanity. Why should I think what I have to say is so important? Especially when I don’t have a clue what I’m saying. What does a cockeyed illustration of Bath say? Or a Chickadee Dancer? Occasionally I get a glimmer of meaning, something I can wrap words around, but if I could say it, I wouldn’t have to carve it. So who cares what one provincial carver sees in the mirror of his work? Why would anyone pay for it?
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| But you don’t do it for the money, of course. Or for the accolades, if any. Making art is as necessary as breathing. But in addition to the inner need there is a desire for others to see the work. The hope that someone else will look at a carving and see into themselves. Find their own image in the mirror. Hear an echo in the melody. |
 Morning Commute [Photo by Frank Burroughs] |
So we opened Gallery Muir. Where and when we could
afford it, and for as long as we could stand it. And people did come
in and see into the work. Some of them. And a few of those could afford
to carry off pieces of the mirror. Were our prices too high? Sure, for
most people. But what finally wore me down was the lack of connection.
The sense that I was holding up my inner thoughts to the world, folks
would parade through, and the work was invisible. Or it was all merchandise. |
| Bath is a great town. Small enough to have a human scale and a feeling of neighborhood. But it isn’t a place you go to see art. I imagined you could set up shop anywhere, and the inner need to look in the mirror would bring people to the work. And some would like it enough to pay the freight. I was wrong. |
| Tom O’Donovan at Harbor Square Gallery in Rockland has kindly offered to be my dealer. Harbor Square is our favorite gallery in all the world. A place of beauty where the work always speaks to us. So I’m thrilled to be in that company. And Rockland is an art mecca. How ironic. I had my formative teen experiences on the streets of Rockland when it was a very raw town. Now it is very upscale. I’m ready to go back. Back to Rockland, and back to my shop full time. |
| We got the chance to show off the work of our friends. Make a lot of music and two dimensional art. Meet some fine folks in Bath, and see our friends more often. We tried on the gallery hat. It didn’t fit. |
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But best of all, for me, was watching Peggy’s creativity explode. Drawing from stop-action dance video and from found images in magazines and newspapers, her images took a quantum leap this year. By summer’s end Peggy was spending seven hours a day drawing. In part, that was her pledge to Carlo. Now she, too, is compelled to do it. I’m stunned by the quality of her drawings, and the stuff moving through them. [The virtual Gallery Muir will feature Peggy's drawings as our next show.] |
| We’d hoped to plant some seeds in Bath. Be a hothouse for local art. We did feel very much a part of the local arts community. But the plant really took root in Peggy. Isn’t that wonderful? |
