A tinkling ding sounds at the door of the Pocket Gallery in Raleigh, the first all day. Behind black-rimmed glasses, Caitlin Cary glances back and forth between the computer screen fielding our Zoom interview and the customer just out of frame. “Hello! Hi!” she says into the distance. She hurriedly pulls on a black mask and asks to pause the interview, then turns off her camera and goes to greet the customer.

A few moments later, Cary pops back up and says excitedly, “People came in and bought art and I got all flustered!”

While no artist goes into it for the money, many are dependent on events like art markets, festivals and gallery shows to support themselves financially. When COVID-19 forced the closure of every in-person event, artists like Cary feared the worst, “I completely freaked out at the beginning thinking that all of my income was going to go away,” says Cary, “How could I plug the hole?”

To help, art organizations like the Visual Arts Exchange (VAE), Raleigh Fine Arts Society and ArtSpace worked hard to pivot their profit motives to directly supporting their artists. While Cary typically focuses on sewn pieces depicting homes, businesses and restaurants, she felt the “call to doodie”, as the VAE said, when they organized the Toilet Paper Art Benefit Auction. Finely crafted on a sheet of toilet paper, she designed a “guest check” from a restaurant for 1 order of COVID-19 to the tune of $100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The piece was entitled “Shit Ticket.” By the end of March 2020, the VAE’s art auction had already raised over $70,000, and local artists received 100% of that total.

Nancy Baker, a Brooklyn based artist, felt the financial pressure as well. She started selling her work to larger organizations, “I’ve sort of generated myself towards public art and corporate art because the galleries are not really selling right now. I’ve sold a lot of work to hospitals,” Baker laughs loudly, “What can you do, right? It’s like crap out there!”

Paul Friedrich, a local pop icon, creates graphic art and comic books. Prior to the pandemic, he regularly attended art markets and comic book conventions to sell his work. He started 2020 strong. He bought supplies and crafted ideas for the next year of upcoming shows. But in March, everything changed, “When everything shut down, it went from looking like it was going to be my biggest year ever to being nothing,” says Friedrich.

But while artists expected the worst, the community came out in full support. There was a clamor for art, says Cary, “People were sitting around with more time on their hands and fantasizing about what they might want to see on their wall.”

Both Friedrich and Cary received an influx in requests for commissions of smaller pieces. And if they didn’t need art, people who wanted to help offered it in other ways, “I feel like a whole lot of people really early on in the year began to worry about artists,” says Cary, “[They] seemed to be reaching out and trying to find ways to help.” Cary even had multiple friends offer to make meatloaves for her.

With such strong support from the community and art organizations, individual artists who feared ruin have felt financially stable during the pandemic. What came as a surprise, however, was the lack of creativity, “Everybody on the internet was talking about how you could use this time to create masterpieces so I really thought that’s what I was going to do,” says Friedrich, “I’ve got a stack of 20 projects that I want to work on. There’s no distractions so it’s just going to be a great time to be creative. And then the emotional toll started to hit.”

 

With every grocery excursion shrouded in death and destruction, Friedrich struggled to even feel creative, “That was kind of a surprise, like, how uncreative I felt.” says Friedrich, “And I had no deadlines so there was no real reason to get something done.”

 

Cary agrees that creating in a vacuum can impact artists mentally, “There’s something about having a public facing space that really helped with a lot of the psychological aspects of art making,” says Cary, “You sort of know why you’re making it and you have an idea of making it for someone. Being at home, I kind of got lost as to what it was for.”

Before opening the Pocket Gallery, Cary had a studio in ArtSpace, a nonprofit arts center that features artist studios, exhibits, and classes. She would regularly ask for advice from the creative individuals who surrounded her. While Cary has been able to rebuild her financial streams, she hasn’t been able to rebuild the environment she once thrived in, “Being able to go down the hall and ask somebody how to do something and get tons of really useful critique,” says Cary, “I miss that terribly and I haven’t really figured out how to recreate that part for myself.

And it’s not just the creative process that’s changed; art itself is changing to reflect life in the pandemic. Friedrich notes the fascination that people seem to have found this year in both humor and true crime podcasts, a strange combination that pairs well with his signature cheeky style. One of his best known works depicts a short, yellow mad scientist with a thought bubble reading, “Am I in the mood for evil... or pie?”. Friedrich has seen artists of all kinds leaning into this kind of entertainment and humor and says that the pandemic has meant “colors are getting brighter.”

Caitlin Cary expects that, for her, the changes will keep coming, “I’m always late to the party,” says Cary, “Like, I discover good records 10 years after they came out so I have a feeling that my reaction to the pandemic will squeeze out of the toothpaste tube a few years down the line when I’ve processed all of the feelings.”

Artists and Absence