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Arts Preview '08-09: Life is art, art is life

There's no shortage of artistic souls in Central Kentucky, but many struggle to turn their talents into careers

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

In 1999, Christine Kuhn was pursuing a doctorate in biochemistry, looking ahead to a lucrative career. And then she gave it up.

She had always felt an artistic stirring in her soul, and she decided to give it a shot, to give herself 10 years to try to establish herself as a full-time artist in the Bluegrass.

"It's not for the faint of heart," Kuhn said Wednesday afternoon from her home studio.

In the nine years since she made that decision, Kuhn has developed her skills, developed a client base, picked up teaching gigs, sold a lot of work, and occasionally found herself running to short-term, part-time jobs at Amazon.com and elsewhere when she saw her bank account diminishing.

Kuhn is like many other Central Kentucky artists, passionate enough about their creative endeavors that they try to piece together work that adds up to a living wage, or pursuing their crafts after putting in a day of work at another job. Lexington and Central Kentucky lack institutions that many major cities have, such as a symphony orchestra that will give musicians full-time work plus benefits, or a fully professional theater employing a roster of actors on union contracts.

"You're not going to make tons of money in art here," says David Cupps, executive director of Arts Kentucky, an arts advocacy group.

But there are a lot of people working in the arts in Central Kentucky.

According to Americans for the Arts, there are 5,244 people working in the arts or for arts-oriented businesses in Kentucky's 6th Congressional District. Collectively, that's more than the work force of either of Lexington's largest employers: Lexmark, with 3,000 employees, and St. Joseph Health Care System, which employs 3,500.

That report is based on businesses registered with the business information agency Dun & Bradstreet, so Cupps says Americans for the Arts' tally is probably a conservative estimate because many artists don't register. That number includes arts administrators and support personnel and businesses that traditionally might not be considered arts, such as television and radio stations, which accounted for 700 of the employees in the survey.

The numbers also don't detail how many people derive their incomes exclusively from practicing their art, and how many hold arts-administration jobs, teach their crafts or do jobs related to their crafts.

LexArts president and chief executive Jim Clark guesses that most artists who make their livings in art supplement with administrative or teaching jobs, "but that's no different than New York or Chicago," he says.

Major metropolises are often cited by artists as places they look to for opportunities to practice their crafts full-time. But many resident artists say they want to live in Central Kentucky, even if it means they might have to scramble more to make a living.

"I'm Appalachian," Kuhn said. "This is where I want to be."

The business hurdle

Often, the challenge for the artist is knowing how to start putting a business together.

"Lots of people who are gifted artists are somewhat inept when it comes to business," says Lori Meadows, executive director of the Kentucky Arts Council.

That's why groups such as the council, Arts Kentucky and LexArts spend a lot of their time helping artists learn business practices, from accounting to networking.

"We often suggest artists take a business course at a community college to get some of the basics," Meadows says.

One of the basics is pricing, which can be one of the first hurdles for a working artist to clear, particularly if a community is not used to paying for art, or for a particular skill, such as acting.

"I've been in shows where everyone around me was getting paid, the technical people, the musicians, all of them, but they hadn't budgeted for the actors," longtime Lexington actor Joe Gatton says. "It's not that those people don't deserve to get paid, but so do the actors."

Acting is one of the tougher areas for artists to get paid, experts say, for a variety of reasons, including a strong community theater tradition, which by definition relies on volunteer talent, and a misperception that anyone can act.

"A lot of people see that artists love what they do, so people make the assumption that it doesn't matter if they get paid," Meadows says.

That can happen in all artistic endeavors. Meadows says that even in state government, of which the arts council is a part, she is sometimes approached by agencies looking for artists to be part of an event or program but who would not be paid for their work.

"They assume they'll want to do it for the exposure," Meadows says. "So we do a lot of work educating people that art is something you pay for."

Gatton earns some of his income from commercial work, including his cowboy ads for Lexington Diagnostic Center and Open MRI, and industrial films.

"I can make more money in something I shoot on my lunch hour than a play I work on for months," he says.

Film work, he says, might be the best hope for actors to improve their financial lot locally.

Enter the Web

In the technological realm, the Internet has proved to be a useful tool for networking, information and marketing for artists.

"There are quite a few artists with very sophisticated Web sites," Cupps says.

He says a weekly e-mail newsletter that Arts Kentucky sends out can be timely, and it comes at little cost because there are no printing or postage costs.

Artists also can use readily available tools, including Facebook and MySpace, to market themselves. Kuhn regularly updates her Facebook profile with news about her work.

"I always post when I sell a piece," she says, "because part of marketing is having the appearance of success, and when you are selling stuff, that's a sign of success."

Clark, the LexArts CEO, says one essential for creating more work in the arts and successful artists in Central Kentucky is expanded programming, by established and new groups alike.

"The more programs you have, the more people you need to support them," he says.

Cupps sees a growing market in Central Kentucky that supports working artists.

"When you have an event like the Woodland Art Fair, which is something like the No. 15 art fair in the country, there's obviously an interest in buying art here," he says.

Gatton is a bit more skeptical, saying he has not seen improved opportunities for actors in a long time.

"Nothing's changed," he says. "And when nothing changes, and the price of everything else rises, it actually gets worse."

But he is not pulling up roots. The situation might not be ideal here for his craft, but this is where he wants to live.

Says Clark: "We do have a lot of artists who live here and indicate they want to live here. We need to be more deliberate in how we support that and not take it for granted."