You Need Health, Wealth and Time to Use Them

his month we are following up on the crisis in health insurance for small businesses that we looked at last summer. According to artists we surveyed and organizations lobbying Congress on the concerns of small businesses, 2003 increases in health insurance premiums are in the double-digits and some craft artists may be priced out of coverage all together.

This is an issue where artists and retailers have to be proactive. Don’t join the estimated 30 million uninsured from households headed by a self-employed person and small-firm workers. Find out what your options are, and make your needs known to your local and national legislators. Health insurance and how to pay for it is a concern for every craft professional.

We thought the weather would be summer-like by the time our July issue went to press, but here in the northeast and some other parts of the United States, a cool, damp spring has lingered. That makes it a good time to read an article about relocating to the warm and sunny Bahamas where craft artists are in demand year round. Contributing writer Diana Lambdin Meyer tells us that while tourism is down on the islands as it is around the globe, locally made handcrafts are popular and still selling there. The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, created eight years ago, is actively encouraging authentic Bahamian crafts and will help American artists get started in the islands’ market.

Here in the United States, we’ve heard from a lot of artists who say they are fed up with all the buy/sell vendors at craft shows. Last year a group of artists in Oklahoma decided to stop seething and organized their own show for 12 carefully chosen exhibitors in December 2002. They were so happy with their first effort, they have decided to do it again in 2003 with 25 craft artists. We think you will be interested in how the novice-promoters whose work is “neither fish nor fowl” found success as Feathered Fish.

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