COVINGTON, Ky. — A Northern Kentucky artisan shop is using a different strategy to help artists survive the COVID-19 pandemic.

Christina Thomas is gallery manager and curator at Purple Paisley in Covington, which came up with the idea to show artists working to customers.

Purple Paisley is using a different strategy to help artists survive the COVID-19 pandemic.

“So, it gives an opportunity for the public to come in and see their process, meet the artist, but all kind of at a nice safe distance,” Thomas said.

One artist in action is Deborah Thornberry.

“When other people were going crazy, being stuck at home, not knowing what to do and stuff, I just went into my studio and would paint,” Thornberry said while she painted a Christmas ornament.

It’s been almost nine months since the COVID-19 pandemic started. It continues to impact nearly every industry, especially artists such as Bill Dirkes, another artist showing his process.

“Before COVID, I was in a couple of galleries, and I was in a two-month one-man show down in Bellevue, and the gallery was Resonate, it no longer exists. I did real well. I had good times. And I sold a lot of art in a two-month period,” Dirkes said.

This year has made it challenging to show or sell art in person.

This year has made it challenging to show or sell art in person. Galleries and museums have closed or reduced capacity and large festivals have been canceled, stunting incomes.

“That’s a big hit for the art community. The artists really rely on that,” Thomas said.

“I even went to Asheville, North Carolina a couple weekends ago to try to find some people there, find some places, couldn’t find much. But it’s about giving that little bit of push, so it’s affected me where, to point where I think the last couple of months I have not been wanting to do art because I felt like this might be the end,” said Chris McCall as he painted a pastel he designed. 

Nationally, the non-profit organization Americans for the Arts shows that 63% of artists and creative workers are unemployed.

This makes an average financial loss per artist of $22,000.

The organization also reports that 41 percent of nonprofit arts organizations are currently open, 59 percent of organizations remain closed and 10 percent are “not confident” that they will survive the pandemic.

“So we just keep doing that and showing up here and the artists keep creating and you stay hopeful that at some point next year we’ll be able to do a little bit more,” Thomas said.