About 4,393 more. That's 14,425 in the year 2000, up from 10,032 a decade earlier.
In fact, Utah was outranked only by Nevada - at 66 percent - in its growth rate of self-described working artists, according to the first-of-its kind study by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The NEA study reports that the size of Utah's artistic population is among the fastest-growing in the country, despite the state's relatively small overall number of artists. The percentage concentration of artists to overall population in Utah increased by 44 percent over a decade. What's more, the state also outpaced many others in numbers of dancers and actors.
"This sounds like what we've been talking about for several years here," said Lynette Hiskey, assistant director of the Utah Arts Council.
She attributed strengths in the number of dancers and other artistic fields, such as animators, to strong liberal arts programs at the state's universities. However, rather than looking at artistic categories, the arts council has conducted studies through geographical communities, recently designating the Uinta Basin and Washington County as "communities on the threshold of change." "They're ready to grow in leaps and bounds," Hiskey said.
According to the NEA study, concentration of artists is one measure of health. In Utah, the concentration of artists in the labor force held steady at 1.3 percent (up slightly from 1.29 percent a decade earlier), which means that as Utah's population has increased, so has its artistic community.
That indicates a generally positive relationship between the state and its artists, said the NEA's Sunil Iyengar, the author of the report, in a phone interview Monday.
The NEA's "Artists in the Workforce" study drew on U.S. Census figures in 1990 and 2000, as well as the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, to compare numbers of artists across state lines. The report focused on artists' community contributions "not in lofty spiritual terms, but in dollars and cents," says NEA Chairman Dana Gioa.
The report found that artists comprise 1.4 percent of the national labor force - that's about 2.2 million - outnumbering lawyers, doctors and agricultural workers.
Artists earn an aggregate of $70 billion per year, are largely self-employed and have a median salary of $30,000 across all categories, which includes radio announcers, photographers and designers. That adds up to make the creative community a boon to a state's resources, according to Iyengar.
In sheer numbers, Utah ranks at a middling No. 21 in the number of artists overall, but excelled in its percentage of dancers: No. 6 in the nation. In addition, Utah ranks No. 7 in its pool of actors, and No. 13 in numbers of producer-directors and designers.
Taken as a whole, the Utah numbers suggest that Utah is leading the demographic trends of other fast-growing Southern and Western states, Iyengar said.
And while Utah doesn't have the sheer number of artists that states like New York and California do, "Utah artists are more than keeping up their own," Iyengar said. The numbers seem to indicate that civic leaders and urban planners in the state "must be realizing the value of the arts and artists," he said.
jcheckoway@sltrib.com
