A Brief History of Front Street
In 2010, Front Street Gallery opened with a show featuring its founders, painters Gene Cadore, Linda Puiatti, Mary Smoot Souter, and photographer Jeremy Wolff.
Eight years later we’re getting back together for a swan song, sort of. Front Street will be closing at the end of the year and will reopen in a new incarnation in the village of Pawling as part of the Pawling Bread Company building, now under construction. The original artists return for The Founders Exhibition, opening the evening of Saturday, July 7. Artist Jeanette Rodriguez, long-time curator at Front Street, will also be a part of the show.
The gallery was the others’ idea. I was brought in last and stayed the longest. Mary and Linda had run a gallery in the village years ago and had been looking for space. Gene also had gallery experience, I think in Poughkeepsie. I had none. I was pretty new in town as a full-timer and was brought in by Linda, it was 4 of us splitting the rent so it was easy.
I had been a commercial photographer in the city–galleries to me meant Soho and mostly conceptual art I didn’t like and couldn’t relate to. And the few times I had to hang my work it drove me crazy, the actual framing and hanging. My first big show was at the Knitting Factory, and my girlfriend and I almost broke up over that.
Front Street Gallery opened in April 2010, to show our own work. I think the others thought they would be selling enough work to pay the rent, but it didn’t work out that way. Artists are not the best business people and there were a lot of disagreements about how to run the place, especially when things weren’t selling. I was more realistic about selling, and under less pressure, as I had just stopped paying rent on my Mott Street studio in the city after 21 years there.
Linda gets credit for the design of the gallery, building a new wall, covering a window, and for the color scheme. Also the style of hanging–very professional, the right height and evenly spaced, which is hard to do. There is an equation and a lot of measuring and calculating to make it look perfect. Linda was committed to that and made sure we were too, and it has made every show look like something you’d see in the city or in a museum. The place looks very professional and I think it surprises people when they walked in the door to find a gallery like this in Patterson.
The biggest surprise has been the quality of the artists who come and show in the gallery–who knew these hills were full of great artists? Over the years we expanded to local artists—including Taryl Gabel, Michael Garland, Crista Pisano, Tanya Kukucka, Anne Huibregtse—and to group shows. The community was expanding but the partners weren’t getting along. The worst thing was Linda wasn’t painting. I’m a big fan of her work and when it was time for her to leave the gallery, it was a good thing–it meant I could keep her as a friend, and I could witness her great success that soon followed.
A collection of most of the shows and events through the years can by seen by scrolling down the website which I made and maintain with my 1998 html editor which I know how to use, barely. Not my intention to record our history like that, it was just the easiest way to do it.
Leaving this great community of artists is the hardest part about closing Front Street. It’s not easy to create a business selling art, but the community of artists, the great openings–a roomful of artists and friends having grown-up conversations–that’s what has made it all worth it.
I never imagined owning a gallery; I sort of backed into it. When Gene and Mary and Linda left the gallery, I had to decide whether to keep the place open by myself. There was a lot of support from the community then, a lot of good ideas, so I kept it going. Soon after, Jeanette Rodriguez, came on board. She was good at everything, a talented artist, and had a great attitude. Terry Ariano had been doing the hard job of hanging the shows, and she taught Jeanette the complex hanging equations that make everything look right. I could never do what Jeanette does hanging these shows–not only the curating and the flow of pictures which she has a talent for, but especially the actual hanging which takes a huge amount of work and concentration. It may look easy but it’s not. For the last few years Jeanette has been doing the heavy lifting.
The greatest satisfaction of running FSG has been encouraging artists. There are a number of people, like Shelley Dell, an amazing painter, who had stopped working, but who was encouraged by our group shows to start painting again. Now Shelley has shown and sold work in many of our shows. Also younger artists: kids who perhaps didn’t have confidence in their work–getting into our group shows, seeing their work on the walls of a real gallery, and coming to openings where they get to meet and connect with other artists.
We had a lot of memorable “family music nights” — playing the music of Bowie, Neil Young, Dylan, Freedy Johnston, and the Beatles, the room full of great musicians, including the late great Al Selvin, and my wife and children. Those were very special.
The gallery space upstairs at Pawling Bread Company will be a fresh start. I don’t know what the space will be like–I’m not the kind of person who can look at an architectural drawing and imagine it. I have to stand in the space. It will be smaller, and whatever we do will have to fit in with what Cynthia Kinahan, the genius baker behind PBC, is doing downstairs. Cynthia has a great sense of design and we’ll work together to create the gallery and event space upstairs.
We were a huge fan of hers, as anyone who has tasted her bread will understand. We saw how hard she worked and wanted to help her move her business to next level. That turned into buying the old “Petite” building at 10 East Main in Pawling Village, with Jay Erickson and some other investors, and it seemed a natural fit to move the gallery into the upper level of the new space. As at FSG, we hope to have art, as well as music, classes and other community events, but none of that has been determined yet. We are hoping Pawling Bread Company, a bakery and cafe, will open in the fall, but that will depend on construction and other things. We are excited to see what Cynthia and Bill, and the designers who are helping them out, will do with the space–we are watching like everyone else.
In any case, Front Street will stay open through the end of the year. I’ve had the idea of the Founders Show for a while, but once we were committed to opening PBC and closing Front Street, it became more important to get the original artists back together–Gene, Mary, Linda and me, along with Jeanette who has become part of the family.
That show opens Saturday, July 7, 6-9pm. We will have an ArtEast show in September, a juried show in October and the 3rd annual FrOGS show in December.
The Patterson space is perfect for a gallery, a great size and design, and I’m hoping by some miracle it will be remain a gallery, hoping that some business or group of artists can keep it going.
–Jeremy Wolff
