People -are- interested in art.. But there are way too many art-communities already, so Origin was basicly stuck with the art-section of the ESF-boards. And ESF-people usually limit to making signatures (aka, find a tutorial and copy it as many times as possible with a different render (that they didn't even make themselves)) and as far as I care, signatures aren't art.
So yes, I'm not surprised to see Origin die a horribly slow death (n/o -Origin)