What happens to artists in a down economy?

Let's tell the truth.

Musings about my career. I recently faced facts. I haven’t had a solid career for twenty-five years. That’s not easy to admit, and while I’m certainly not alone, it doesn’t help that I’ve lots of company.

For example, when the Oakland farm team came to Sacramento in the early 2000s, I created a lot of fun art. This image was printed as a poster and also as a life-size mural at the ballpark, honoring the Sacramento Solons. Some of the figures were taken from photos of a few of the guys when they were young, and then, meeting them at their local hangout, I photographed them as they were in 2003-ish. Hell, I can’t even remember.

There have been so many challenges since then. I’d gone back to school in 2004 to study for a master’s in sculpture. Got out just in time for the crash of 2007, which if we tell the truth, “ended” just in time for Covid. See this brilliant site for in depth explanations of market trends.

I wrote for the Sacrament Bee from 2011-19, and again in 2024, and also created one huge ceramic installation, published a couple of books, etc. Not a living wage.

Having watched the transition in the hospitality industry starting in the late 90s, from guest services to investor C-suite profits was palpable. Original art suffered.

It took me all those years to get a divorce. One problem was that my ex had an SBA loan, which I realized all too late, meant that I was also a guarantor. (Here’s a secret: one can only get a conventional loan if one doesn’t NEED a loan.) When the bank let me off that loan and we kicked up the pace on the divorce, Covid hit and the last thing I wanted to do was take over responsibility for a restaurant.

Thus, it wasn’t until August 2022 that I became owner of a restaurant operation and let me confess right here that I doubt there could be anyone less prepared for the challenge than I. Sure, I knew the restaurant business but from the front of the house and only with big dogs like Hilton and Disney 4-star properties. Not a burger joint, not with about 14 employees! I’d never even been a real employee, nor had I ever hired employees, and I didn’t eat burgers and had absolutely NO interest in learning to cook.

The only experience I could draw upon was project management of those big installations and knowing how to find people who knew the tasks about which I was unqualifiedly unqualified to perform or manage.

I shocked myself with the level of my own incompetence and I’m not just being modest. I honestly don’t know how anyone with less than a lot of education can own and run a restaurant in California.

For restaurants, who does trump think is going to pick California produce? What restaurant doesn’t depend on tomatoes? Here’s a tomato cannery and processing plant in Woodland. Those are aluminum cans. Are farmers who voted for trump going to admit that their bailouts are really welfare? Did they last time?

My point is that it’s almost impossible to make a profit in the restaurant business unless you sell hard alcohol and those prices are rising, too. I’d have liked to pay my employees a “living wage.” Forget it. After taxes and insurance of all sorts, even above minimums, as much as I wanted to pay more, a living wage isn’t possible. Not sure in what industry that will even be remotely possible? I kept warning my staff about AI, that they should prepare themselves with the skills to survive.

So if restaurants won’t be able to survive these insane tariff effects and other manufactured chaos, how’s an artist supposed to survive making such a discretionary commodity?

Have you or are you planning on buying any art soon? Please support your local creatives of all sorts.