The battle of fine art versus the economic crisis hits home in Old Town Silverdale.
A little more than 15 months ago, the little yellow cabin at the corner of Washington and Lowell streets in Old Town Silverdale was abuzz with positive vibrations and grand ambitions.
A group of about a dozen like-minded local artists and artisans had banded together to rent out the space and form a nonprofit artists’ cooperative. They were making repairs, painting the walls, installing new lights and assembling the artwork that would soon turn the building into the Old Town’s first official fine art gallery: Silverdale Fine Arts.
They threw a big bash during that December’s art walk, feting both the gallery and that fine art finally found a stable home in Old Town Silverdale. It was a day that SFA organizers — many of whom had already been working to bring art to Old Town through the quarterly Old Town Art Walk — said they had long dreamt of.
A little more than a year later, the gloomy, “For Lease” sign-filled reality of 2009 has taken its toll.
The gallery is now empty of all vibrations. Silverdale Fine Arts closed its doors on the final day of February with only five remaining members and disappointment having taken the place of ambition.
“It just didn’t have enough business,” SFA financial director Richard Badger said. “I think it all came down to the economy … maybe if we’d picked a different year, maybe if we’d picked a different location, maybe all of the above.”
Maybe nothing could have saved the gallery.
The co-op, which opened the doors to SFA in December 2008, had planned to offer classes and special events both by and for the community, in addition to regularly showcasing and selling work from local artists.
“But in order to do that,” Badger noted, “we needed to sell a lot more art than we did.”
Of course, selling more art — wares often regarded as discretionary or luxury — is not an all-too-encouraging prospect amidst the prevailing penny-pinching economy and a daunting financial forecast.
Fine arts organizations across the country are going into “survival mode,” as reported by USA Today Monday in an article detailing a wealth of arts organizations, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Miami City Ballet, Broadway to Carnegie Hall, that are scaling back their operations or, in some cases, shutting down altogether. And the worst may be yet to come, they say.
Then again, late last month the private art collection of the late, legendary French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent brought in more than $264 million on its first night at auction, becoming the most expensive collection ever sold, the New York Times reported Feb. 23.
“People who are going to buy art are going to buy art,” another Old Town Silverdale art purveyor, Old Town Custom Framing Shop and Gallery owner Maria Mackovjack, noted.
Similarly, those people who create art are likely to keep creating art despite whatever crisis may surround them — which leads to the thought that perhaps it’s the gallery itself, or the quote-unquote art gallery we’ve come to know, that will be most affected and possibly altered by the current economic crisis.
“You have to diversify,” Mackovjack added. “What I think is going to save me is that I’m going to have classes and printing and framing (in addition to gallery space). You just have to step outside the box of what you consider a gallery, and, I think, you have to push those boundaries a little bit. Whatever brings customers through the door.”
FINE ART REMAINS in Old Town Silverdale during the quarterly Old Town Art Walk. The next session will be March 13 featuring more than 10 new artists at venues throughout Old Town. “If you’re having an economic downturn, we have just the stimulus package,” they say. “Art, food, music, flowers, wine and it’s all free!” Info: www.oldtownartwalk.com.
