WHERE’S my bailout?


Many Americans — the out of work, the underwater, the plain fed up — have been asking that question since big banks and automakers received all those taxpayer-financed rescues in 2008.


But it turns out that a number of small, private rescue funds have been lending a hand to a group that is definitely not in the too-big-to-fail camp: writers, artists and other creative types. Think of these funds as sort of a TARP for the arts crowd, only with much smaller dollar figures, and with little or no help from Washington. Consider the story of George Handy, a potter in Asheville, N.C. He didn’t know how he would get by financially after a Honda minivan barreled into his wood-walled studio on an October evening in 2008, about the time of Wall Street’s bailout. His work was destroyed, his livelihood imperiled.


“I could have been picking glass out of my eyes with all the windows that shattered,” Mr. Handy said. “My file cabinet was smashed. Pots worth $1,000 apiece were gone.”


Fortunately, Mr. Handy, 57, who has made his living as a potter since college, had bought home insurance for the first time a month earlier. But one claims agent dismissed his lost work as “a handful of clay,” Mr. Handy said, though the insurer would eventually give him just more than $37,000.


Friends and neighbors lent a hand, but then more financial aid came from CERF+, the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, which helps artists in need with grants and long-term interest-free loans. CERF+ gave him $4,500 in all: a $3,150 loan and a $1,350 grant. That, in addition to what he received from the insurance claim, was enough to see him through.


A run of bad luck — a car accident, an illness, the loss of a job by a spouse or partner — can mean financial disaster for many artists, who are often self-employed.  And their numbers are huge: almost two million artists of various types are in the labor force, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.


Unlike financial companies and automakers, which received a combined $700 billion from Washington in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, most artists don’t qualify for any bailouts. Personal savings, insurance, a generous relative or an emergency grant is often all that stands between them and financial ruin.


“A lot of artists fall between the cracks, between FEMA and the Small Business Administration,” says Cornelia Carey, executive director of CERF+. The group has been working since 2006 with state, regional and federal agencies and foundations to help creative workers survive personal financial crises and to plan for possible disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or medical emergencies.


Many can’t afford such preparations themselves. “They’re both high-need and very vulnerable,” Ms. Carey said. “They often have a low and erratic income, sporadic employment and most are not big enough to access a loan from the Small Business Administration. Preparedness is kind of the last thing that gets done.”


ANDY NULMAN, president of Just for Laughs, the annual comedy festival based in Montreal, expressed similar sentiments.


“An artist’s brain is just a different head space,” Mr. Nulman said. “They don’t necessarily plan for tomorrow. An artist is a dreamer. The next hit might be right around the corner.”


Mr. Nulman has worked with comedians from around the world, including Mike MacDonald, a Canadian who is now living with his mother in Ottawa, while awaiting a liver transplant. Mr. MacDonald, 57, recently toured in British Columbia, netting $5,000, a small fraction of the income of his best years, which was as much as $22,000 a month.


“I did 28 shows in 31 days playing really small venues,” Mr. MacDonald said of his recent tour. “Talk about the economic crunch.” Weakened by his illness, he spent four days in the hospital during the tour.


Now too sick to work, his retirement savings gone and hoping to net $50,000 from the sale of his suburban Los Angeles home, he recently pleaded his case on the Internet — on GoFundMe.com, a donations site. Within three days, he had raised more than $26,000.


“It’s amazing. I’ve never seen this,” said Howard Lapides, his manager of 30 years.


Mr. MacDonald, at least, can live with his mother and, because of Canada’s government-run health care system, faces no continuing medial bills. Chrystle Fiedler, 54, a freelance writer in Greenport, N.Y., is not so fortunate.


Ms. Fiedler, who is single and lives alone, was injured in an accident in a grocery in 2010. A distracted store employee bumped into her cheek so hard that she almost fainted from the pain, she said. Her condition was diagnosed as atypical trigeminal neuralgia, a rare disorder of a cranial nerve. She takes powerful painkillers 10 times a day.


Earning a living has become extremely difficult, she said: “I can work for an hour, and then I need to rest. The pain is unmanageable if I talk too much or read too much or write too much.”


Ms. Fielder applied to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund, which gave her $4,250. (Disclosure: this reporter serves on the fund’s volunteer board.) In October 2011, Ms. Fielder also began receiving $1,800 a month for six months from the Haven Foundation, started in 2006 by Stephen King.