Cindy Ballou caters to Fairfield’s artistic community

FAIRFIELD — Cindy Ballou is running Cindy’s Art Beat on the north side of the Fairfield square, which she started after learning there was a need for an art supply store in town.

It began with Ballou taking art classes from Bill Teeple, who runs ICON Gallery on the west side of the square. Teeple mentioned to her one day that Fairfield could use a store for artists who needed specialty art items, unlikely to be carried by office supply retailers. Ballou and her husband David invested money in creating such a business, which they started in the back lower level of ICON Gallery, at the far end of Teeple’s studio.

After nine years of that arrangement, the art supply shop had expanded to the point that it needed a new home. The business moved from the west side of the square to the north side, sharing space with Henderson’s Framing Shop.

“My mission is to provide a welcoming, encouraging, inspiring space for artists, art lovers, and all our customers,” Ballou said. “I am dedicated to carrying high-quality artist materials that are reasonably priced. I love helping artists find what they need, be it supplies or encouragement.”

Ballou said that running a small retail outlet is not easy, especially when she has to compete with big box stores and online titans. To make matters worse, just a year and a half after moving into the new space, the pandemic hit and shut the business down for a couple of months.

“We never came back all the way from that shutdown,” Ballou said. “We are still open only part-time. Our story of surviving is likely not unique.”

With the decline in traffic post-pandemic, Ballou saw that she could no longer afford to pay for help. At the same time, she couldn’t run the business by herself. She and the rest of the artist community hit upon a solution whereby the exhibiting artists whose work is on display would agree to volunteer to keep the store open during the week. Ballou takes no pay for her hours worked, and neither do any of the other artists.

“Several kind artists now help on a regular basis, mostly because they don’t want another art venue to shut down in this once-thriving artist community,” Ballou said.

Ballou was born and raised in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. She moved to Fairfield in 1984, coming here from Fairbanks, Alaska. She was a single mother with a baby, and had visited some friends in Fairfield with families of their own. During her visits, she felt this would be a safe community in which to raise her daughter.

The art store takes up a lot of Ballou’s time, curating the gallery, managing volunteers, and doing the bookkeeping, banking and ordering. She said that, in the little free time she has, she enjoys going on walks with her husband David, planting patches of native flowers and shrubs, taking art classes and visiting family in Alaska, Arizona, and Maine.

Ballou was quick to add that she can’t operate the store by herself, and that she is indebted to volunteers such as Tree Neal, Cris Soth, Irene Murphy, Hilary Gleason, Caer Connect, Amuray Wiggins, Danielle Shier, Jo Bartruff and Bill Munson.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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