economics Archives | Carol L. Douglas

April 15, 2020

Be careful what you wish for

One in five houses in Maine is someone’s vacation home. The potential implications of COVID-19 are terrible.

Four Ducks, Cape Elizabeth Paint for Preservation, by Carol L. Douglas

One thing I’ve dreaded doing was striking out upcoming events on my website. As I’ve written before, I think the plein air festival has lost its punch. Because of this, I deleted all but a few key events in 2020. The ones I kept had strong revenues or provided unusual opportunities for painting. Then cancellations started flooding in from organizers rightly worried about promoting events they can’t deliver. Now I’m left with what I’d thought I wanted: a summer where I can concentrate on painting here at home, and where I can run my studio-gallery without interruption.

Of course, I don’t know whether anyone will be able to come. Like everyone else, I have no idea what shape the summer will take. The state of Maine is on lockdown. That’s not irrational: one in five houses in this state is someone’s vacation home, the highest percentage in the nation. That makes us very vulnerable to visiting pathogens.

Ottawa House, Parrsboro International Plein Air Festival, by Carol L. Douglas

But tourism is one of our top economic drivers. In 2018, over 37 million people visited Maine, spending $6.2 billion and supporting 110,000 jobs. The cost of this lockdown, if it continues through the summer months, is incalculable. The cultural costs are being felt already. Our bicentennial was March 15, but the state had to postpone a host of celebrations that have been years in the making.

In the near future, I’ll be teaching painting via Zoom. Teaching via the internet is going to be radically different from teaching in person. I need to figure out new ways to prepare, since we won’t all be looking at the same scene, carefully curated to address a specific issue in painting. The issue isn’t technology; it’s creating projects that are doable in students’ homes.

Ocean Park Beach, Art in the Park, by Carol L. Douglas

I’m kicking myself for not paying more attention to Katie Dobson Cundiff while we were in Argentina. She teaches at Ringling College of Art and Design. Her students were all sent home while they were on spring break. While the rest of us were larking around the glaciers, she was creating a template for remote teaching.

The only analogy in my lifetime was the economic collapse of 2008. My income fell by ²/₃ in one horrible year. Both painting sales and classes were way down. My strategy was to stop showing and selling until the market had time to recover. Even my teaching practice was reduced. Instead, I used that time to focus on my own development.

I don’t think the current crisis will have the same shape as the 2008 crash, but I’ll probably do something similar. I’m retracting, watching, and trying to be nimble. And I’m really curious about your ideas.

But first I have to feel better. I’m entering week four of being ill. This morning, I’m breaking my quarantine to drive to my PCP’s office for further testing. If I get arrested, you can send me a file in a cake.

April 3, 2019

Get a real job

Artists are catalysts for renewal and a powerful economic engine.

David Blanchard and me, practicing being tourist attractions inside a tourist attraction (Camden harbor) yesterday. Dave had lost his Old Salt hat to the wind, but luckily it landed inside a dinghy. Photo courtesy Jennifer Johnson.

We tend to think of the arts as intangible contributors to society. They help elevate our souls, but there’s not much money in them. That’s a misconception I try to correct. One can make a living in the arts, but one needs an entrepreneurial spirit and reserves of courage to overcome the negative messages our society sends artists.

The arts in America contribute more than $800 billion a year to our economy. That’s around 4% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These numbers are part of an economic report released last month by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (part of the Department of Commerce) and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The total contribution of the arts in America is equal to almost half of Canada’s GDP. The arts represent more of America’s GDP than the construction and transportation sectors, and nearly five times as much as the agriculture sector.

Teddi-Jann Covell at Camden harbor yesterday. Photo courtesy Jennifer Johnson.

Broadcasting is the giant in the room, with about $134 billion, and movies are a little behind that. Roughly $22 billion is generated by us independent artists, performers and writers. That’s more than museums, architects, fine-arts schools and performing arts companies. And as we all know, there are also significant grey-market earnings among professional artists (but not by me). Roughly five million people are employed in the arts and cultural sector of our economy, earning $386 billion in 2016.

The arts are one area where America runs a trade surplus. In 2016, we exported nearly $25 billion more in arts and cultural goods and services than we imported, a 12-fold increase over 10 years. (Our exports are largely driven by movies, television, advertising and video games.)

Robert Lichtman, Colleen King and me at class in Camden Harbor yesterday. Photo courtesy Jennifer Johnson.

What does this mean in a rural, relatively-poor state like Maine? Arts and culture, science and technology, and business management are three economic drivers that push regional development. The first category is one our state has exploited successfully. Rockland is a great success story of a town totally transformed by the arts.

There is a myth that artists congregate in cities. While it’s true that cities have the highest density of artists, there are many rural communities that attract creatives. Artists like affordable housing, vibrant art scenes, educated communities, and access to a market for their art. In 2017, about 36.7 million tourists visited Maine. (The 2018 numbers should be coming out any day now.) Part of what they wanted to see were artists painting, and part of what they like to buy is Maine art.

Ed Buonvecchio painting the tug Cadet at Camden harbor yesterday. Photo courtesy Jennifer Johnson.

Because art is handmade, it becomes tied to the place it’s created. That’s an economic-development boon, because the product can’t be outsourced. Artists are great gentrifiers. Their skill set includes entrepreneurism and figuring out how to make things. And an artist is unlikely to leave for another state or country because the Economic Development people offer him a better deal.

February 27, 2018

Maker culture

Knowing how to make things was part of our human birthright. Who stole it?

Little Giant, by Carol L. Douglas. Courtesy Camden Falls Gallery.

I have a to-do list a mile long. One item on it is a muslin mockup of a dress for my granddaughter Grace, who will be the flower girl in her aunt’s wedding in May. I’ll see Grace in Buffalo as I finish my Alabama trip, and I need this mockup to check her measurements. Grace is two years old and growing like a weed. I’ll make the bodice and skirt separately and stitch them together at the last minute, between my workshop in Rye and the wedding.

On Sunday I complained that I’d have to give up my Sunday nap to finish it. “Is there anything you can’t do?” a friend laughed. In truth, I’m only good at things that require spatial skills. That includes math, art and sewing. I can’t cook, although I don’t mind cleaning up afterward.

I learned to sew in 4H. That’s a venerable old organization dedicated to developing citizenship, leadership, and responsibility by teaching life skills. It’s also where I learned basic carpentry, animal husbandry, and how to make a pie crust. The first speech I ever gave was at the County Fair. It was on leavening agents and was called Lovely or Lumpy.

Catskill Farm, pastel, by Carol L. Douglas

Other things I learned at home: how to paint (from my father), how to garden, how to can vegetables, and how to put up hay. My parents were not farmers: my father was a psychologist and my mother a nurse. They were practitioners of the back-to-the-land movement, but everyone of their generation knew how to make and mend things. Today, if we do those things at all, we do them as hobbies or artisanal work.

When my twins were infants, I made them sleepers. It cost me more than they cost ready-made at Kmart. After that, I only sewed for special occasions.

That’s true across most of our economy. It’s cheaper to buy a new toaster than fix the one you have. It’s cheaper to buy baked beans than make them yourself. It’s certainly cheaper to buy a chair than build one. The consequence of this is that our kids have grown up in a world of consumption rather than creation. They have no idea that for humans, creativity is a natural part of life.

Still life, by Carol L. Douglas

Last week, someone sent me this irritating little piece in Smithsonian, which suggests we “leave the cairn-building to the experts.” Ours is certainly a scolding culture, and the goal of all that hectoring is to keep us as passive recipients of others’ experiences.

Why the passion for stacking up rocks on the beach anyway? The human animal is designed for creativity. Our throwaway culture has stolen that from us.

In Maine, there’s still much more of a make-or-mend culture than in other parts of the country. People really do patch up their cars and boots for another go-round. It’s also a more entrepreneurial society than our cosmopolitan centers. I don’t mean that in the Bill Gates sense. Kids who grow up with skilled laborers as parents understand that they don’t need a college degree to be useful, productive, self-supporting members of the community. Kids who grow up with self-employed parents understand there are more ways than a 9-to-5 job to earn a living.

It would be nice if we could add that to our measure of performance when we tote up how well a community does at preparing its kids for the future.

January 25, 2018

A lament about bad design

American workers and engineering aren’t the problem. I blame our crummy washing machines on our corporate culture.

My oft-abused, much-loved Toyota Prius.

Regular followers of my travels know that I usually do them in a 2005 Toyota Prius. It has 250,000 miles on it, many of which were on back roads it was never designed to handle. In fact, its only major repair has been replacing the rear springs.

At the time I bought it, it was untried technology—in the US. But it had been sold in Japan since 1997. As of last year, Toyota has sold 4 million units of this car. It’s been a great success as a business venture.

My Prius replaced a Ford Windstar. At 148,000 miles, it suffered a catastrophic engine fail on a wintry road south of Binghamton, NY. That doesn’t tell the whole story. For the prior two years, it had been increasingly frail, needing large influxes of cash to keep moving.

It can move a whole show of paintings, or a party of snacks.

Last week, President Trump slapped steep tariffs on imports of washing machines and solar panels. This was in response to American manufacturers’ complaints about foreign competition. In washing machines, the tariffs will affect Samsung and LG. Not coincidentally, these are brands with excellent consumer ratings and satisfaction.

“Over the past three to five years, LG and Samsung have been driving washer innovations, more than other brands,” saidCR market analyst Mark Allwood.

In 2015, we purchased a house that came with two-year-old Whirlpool Cabrio washer and dryer. The washer lasted another two years. We replaced it with a laundry system made by Korean firm LG. That’s rather spectacular obsolescence, seeing as our previous washer dated from the 1980s.

I’d like to say that’s an anomaly, but it seems sadly common. I hear frequent complaints about the built-in obsolescence of American appliances. “If you have an old refrigerator, dishwasher, stove, or washer, go to any lengths you can to keep it,” seems to be the common belief.

The conversation reminds me of the 1970s, when foreign imports were first taking a big piece of the American car market. Does anyone remember those Ford jokes, or how reliable those second-generation Toyota Corollas were in comparison? American automakers earned the loss of their major car market by building bad products based on false assumptions.

My other car, of course, is a bicycle. Here it is ready to paint in Camden.

I’ll assume the President’s impulse in setting these tariffs is to protect American jobs. Still, he’s hurting American consumers. Most of us are perfectly willing to buy American, but not when American corporations foist inferior products on us.

I’m not blaming American workers for this failure, or even American engineering. These products are designed and manufactured to financial realities that originate in our corporate culture. Is that so relentless about slashing costs that it doesn’t have time to build good consumer products?

What does this have to do with my life as a traveling artist? Well, I’m in New York again today, and once again I’m in an American-made car, my husband’s old Mercury minivan. It needs a major repair to get us home, and this is the third time this has happened in six months. I’m going back to Maine and trading it in for a Honda, quick, before the government slaps a tariff on those, too.

September 1, 2017

Should you lower your prices?

Basic economic laws shape the art market. That doesn’t mean lower prices make for more sales.

Dead Wood, by Carol L. Douglas

Yesterday a reader sent me this, which says that if demand for your work is modest, you should lower your prices. I am not an art appraiser like Alan Bamberger, just an artist who makes and sells art. But my own experience tells me otherwise.

Bamberger bases his argument on something known in economics as the ‘supply relationship.’ This refers to the correlation between price and how much of a good or service is supplied to the marketplace.

The higher the price of something, the less demand there will be. As its price goes up, so does the opportunity cost. The consumer elects to do something else with his or her money.

More work than they bargained for (Isaac H. Evans) by Carol L. Douglas

At the same time, producers make more of things when they can get a higher price for them. There is a point at which it is no longer cost-effective to produce a product for market, and producers go offline.

At some point, supply and demand meet. This is called the equilibrium point. Suppliers are selling everything they produce and consumers are getting everything they demand. In truth, capitalism is a little messier than that, and the market constantly pushes prices around—upward when there’s more demand, down when there’s little demand.

All flesh is as grass, by Carol L. Douglas

A great example of this is the lowly tomato. Back in Rochester, NY, where they are plentiful, I used to buy a basket of them for $2. Yesterday a friend bought a single tomato for the same price. Tomatoes are hard to grow in Maine. The lack of supply drives up the price.

That’s classic economic theory and it’s amply borne out in goods and services marketing—in things like gasoline, Ford F-150s, child care, etc. It is not necessarily true in luxury goods. There, the matter of perceived value mucks things up. Unlike tomatoes, paintings have no easily-quantified value. The price set for them is purely subjective. The late Thomas Kinkade is an unfortunate example of this.

In some art forms, supply is inherently limited by the time and skill of the makers. This question has been resolved in some areas of art. Music and photography, for example, can be reproduced infinitely. It hasn’t been solved in painting. I will make a finite number of paintings in my lifetime. When I’m gone, that will be it.

Packing oakum (Isaac H. Evans), by Carol L. Douglas

That doesn’t make artists immune to larger economic forces. In fact, as a luxury good, painting is the first thing people cut back on in hard times.

My prices were set in collaboration with a gallerist who sells my work. She knows the market and where I fit in. I keep them consistent across venues. Most professional artists do the same.

An artist may make work that is beautifully executed and explores the art questions of its time and place. It still may not be monetarily valuable because he or she hasn’t shown it where buyers congregate.

As my friend Bobbi Heath likes to say, if you’re not selling paintings, it’s because not enough people are seeing them. Don’t lower your prices; don’t be down on yourself as a failure. Just work to be seen in more places.