Money-making intellectuals

I met an acquaintance for a sit-down today; she has been a political operative for some years now, and wants to return to her original loves: art, design, writing. She's a creative, that's for sure. Trouble is, she's in Eastern Maine, and there's not a lot of market for creative thinkers and artists. Sure, there are artists around, and there are creatives. But this art and creativity is consumed mostly by summer people, not by natives. And, the stuff that sells is not always the critically interesting work; it tends to be the stuff that mirrors what people love about Maine: rustic beauty, tradition, simplicity.
These traits are good, and I'm glad they are here. But as we talked about the improbability of making a living in Eastern Maine being an art critic, it became clear we both shared the same realization, that our digs did not appreciate the intellectual. I have gone to several artist open houses and commented on composition, and I get this blank stare from the artist. They often do not look at their own work critically. They often do not curate their work. In other words, they have no critical framework through which they organize their body of work. How can this be?
If there is no need for critical exposition or curatorial organization, then what we are faced with is a region that is operating as an unstructured region, devoid of consciousness. This may be too harsh an indictment, but I think in a way folk art is just that: art without reflection.