Nicolette’s Design Diary

I imagine with the economy this won’t be the last gallery closing I’ll hear about. Times are tough for everybody. If you’re an artist, it’s likely that times have already been tough for quite a while. I remember when I was doing shows back in 2005 and 2006 that there were already a lot of artists that were saying that sales were off and things were slowing down considerably. It seems as though artists along with other a lot of other similar professions are the canaries in the coal mine. When bad financial times are headed our way, we appear to be among the first to get hit and among the last to recover.

I watched President Obama’s press conference last night on the stimulus, and while I think that he’s doing all he can, there’s still going to be a tough road ahead for quite a long time. Is it the right thing? Is it too big? Is it too small? Is the money going to the right things? Is it going to work? Everyone seems to have an opinion, but in truth no one is really going to know until we go through it. And we’re going to go through something whether we want to or not.

He says that things will probably be bad until next year. Frankly, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it lasted longer than that. Will the economy implode? I doubt it. If anything I guess the economy will probably be like Japan in the 1990’s, what was referred to as “The Lost Decade” where stocks and real estate basically collapsed and stay flat for over a decade after several years of real estate and stocks being greatly inflated. Sounds suspiciously familiar to me.

I am not trying to be doom and gloom here. I wrote about how artists can survive a downturn on my Crafted Web blog several months ago and gave some tips on how we can get through this. While the prospects seem bleak and is probably bleak for a lot of artists, I also do believe that we’ll get through it especially if you’re willing do what it takes.  It means changing your product line or your marketing. It means finding a new market for your work or finding new ways to make money or finding additional ways to supplement your income. It means being more frugal and smart with the money you have. It may mean making the tough decision to downsize or close altogether like Barbara Hester did. But it also means telling yourself that this isn’t the end of the world and if one door closes perhaps another one is opening somewhere else. And it means sticking together and helping each other out when we can.