The art of survival

As the recession hits arts organizations all over the country, Lynchburg finds itself in a unique position.

Much of the arts scene here is still relatively young; the city has become a place where landmarks like The Ellington, The Academy of Fine Arts and Riverviews Artspace operate alongside new galleries, theater groups and music venues that seem to be popping up almost every day.

“Everything is new. There’s that energy and enthusiasm that comes with it,” says local artist Ron Boehmer, who has lived in Lynchburg since 1978 and once served as the Fine Arts Center’s visual arts program director.

“The Lynchburg arts scene is the most vital it’s been since I moved here.”

Because of that relative youth, Boehmer says, it’s harder to gauge how the economy has affected the arts scene as a whole.

For him, it’s meant selling fewer paintings. Boehmer sells his work in galleries all over Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Delaware and North Carolina, usually for between $1,000 and $6,000.

In a good year, about 70 percent of his income comes from sales. Over the past two years, though, those sales have gone down by about 30 to 40 percent, he says.

Boehmer chalks it up to the economy — “When you hit (people’s) investments on that level, they have to rethink how they’re going to spend their disposable income” — but is quick to note the unpredictable nature of an artist’s life.

“If you’re going to get into this, you’ve got to be clear-headed enough to realize it’s like a lottery,” he says.

“You’ve either got to be terribly practical and commercial about it, or you’ve got to be steadfastly romantic and philosophical and have a lot of faith that it’s worth doing.”

Mike Twery, another local artist, says the recession has hit him hard — again.

“(Art) is always the first thing to go,” he says. “It’s happened to me several times. You’re getting somewhere, and you’ve got a break, and if there’s a little bit of a recession or something, the first thing to dry up is the arts.

“It’s always hard to get people to spend money on art,” he adds. “It’s a lot harder now than it was even a year ago.”

Twery’s work — paintings, sculptures and cut-outs — usually sells for between $200 and $2,000, depending on the size. He’s tried making smaller ticket items, like glow-in-the-dark angel sculptures, but says he’d have to sell a thousand of them to make any kind of living.

He paints and sculpts in a studio situated behind the downtown YMCA, and has made a name for himself doing commission projects around town, like a recent mural at City Hall.

Right now, he is gearing up for a fall exhibit at the Avenue Arts Studio Gallery in Lynchburg, while searching for his next commission project.

Twery also might have to consider finding a full- or part-time job, “very quickly,” he says, “unless some of these projects I’m working on come through.”

While the individual artist is struggling, on a larger scale, the Hill City hasn’t seen any of the art institution closings that bigger cities have.

But organizations are still making the cuts necessary to survive during a time when donations, grants and corporate sponsorships are down across the board.
Rick Piester, the Lynchburg Symphony Orchestra’s executive director, says funds raised through both their annual solicitation campaign and phonathon were down about a third from last year.

To make up for those shortfalls, Piester, the symphony’s administrative assistant and its conductor/music director are all taking 20-percent pay cuts.

He says they’re also building most of this season’s concerts around music from their library, so they don’t have to spend additional funds buying or renting new music.

The Academy of Fine Arts is taking a different tack; its employees are in the midst of a three-week furlough that ends Sept. 1. And, instead of going unpaid for three weeks, employees opted to spread the pay cuts over the past six months to make up the difference.

Executive Director Dick Kordos says it’s a measure that will have the least impact on the Academy’s overall business, since August is already a down month, when few programs are on the schedule.

“We have not lost any programming, any shows, any staff,” he says. “We’re holding together.”

He says the annual giving campaign, which raises money to pay bills and staff, was severely impacted by the economy. (The ongoing construction and renovation of the Academy of Music Theatre has not been affected; money for that comes from a separate fundraising effort called the Cornerstone Campaign).
While individual donations may be down, Kordos is quick to point out that that’s in money and not people.

The same number of donors gave money this year. They just gave fewer dollars.

“It’s saying, ‘Hey, they support us,’” he says. “They’re just giving less under the circumstances.”

People also supported the Academy with their feet.

Kordos says attendance at their shows last year was up, something he likens to the flourishing of the arts that occurred during the Great Depression — “the way people got away from their worries.”

Other local arts groups are also reporting high attendance records.

Mary Ann Racin, executive director of Riverviews Artspace, says they’ve had a steady stream of people coming to their various programs, most of which are free.

Riverviews’ programming budget depends on donations, corporate sponsorships and rentals for special events (the Reading Room and the Craddock Terry Gallery are popular spots). All three are down, so the organization is looking for places to make cuts “without losing any of the artistic excellence for which Riverviews is known.”

Racin says they’ll eliminate live entertainment at First Fridays opening receptions, and they’re also holding a fundraiser in September to try to make up the difference.

Amherst’s Endstation Theatre Company also saw audience gains during its second annual Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival, which was held at Sweet Briar College and featured three productions.

The entire festival was done on a shoestring budget. “Going into the summer, we were going to pretend that we had no money and, essentially, we were going to use that as a strength,” says Artistic Director Geoff Kershner.

Kershner and his cohorts got creative by reusing materials and borrowing costumes and equipment from Sweet Briar and other local colleges. They also performed a shorter version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the festival’s outdoor production, so it would end at dusk and wouldn’t require as much lighting.
Remounting last summer’s “The Bluest Water” also helped; there was little production cost, but it still did comparable business that helped Endstation close the gap in its fundraising budget.

“We weren’t so big that something like the economy tanking (would) destroy us. We were small (and) getting going. It just means we’re not able to grow as fast. It halts us a little bit.”

“We’re not going to let it stop us,” Kershner says. “We’re not letting it defeat us.”