Dry Goods’ Ground Space gallery arrives with show of ‘Public Spectacle’

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

Sipping cappuccinos from Peez Leweez café, Sue Barnett and Jeff Christensen sit in their bookstore and talk about the birth of an arts association in Livingston Manor, NY.

For good reason, Peez Leweez owner Sims Foster joins the conversation. After all, two years ago his Pearl Street café’s cappuccinos helped brew an idea so robust that Christensen calls it a “revelation.”

Livingston Manor was in need of a bookstore.

Barnett and Christensen forged ahead with a build-it-and-they-will-come philosophy, despite one resident’s advice: “You like books? Sell chainsaws and buy books.”

“It was good advice but we didn’t follow it,” Christensen joked.

Since the couple opened Hamish and Henry Booksellers on Main Street last year, they have played host to potluck poetry nights and film screenings with help from Foster and a collection of Livingston Manor residents, and the bookstore has become a meeting place for local writers and artists.

Now, the group is ready for the next stage of promoting arts in the community. This Saturday the newly incorporated Dry Goods Arts Association will open its inaugural show, a collection of photographs by five local artists, all of which document one facet of human existence, “Public Spectacle,” a grand example of which will be happening simultaneously in Livingston Manor as the second annual Trout Parade displays some of Sullivan County’s most colorful costumes.

Dry Goods is renting a newly renovated gallery space at 41 Main Street, which the group has named Ground Space, and monthly shows following “Public Spectacle” are planned through November.

“It’s great to have that ground floor, right-off-main-street presence,” Christensen said.

And yet another space is in the works. Dry Goods has completed the first phase of renovating two floors above Peez Leweez in the Hoos Building, which will eventually become Air Space, a venue with five exhibition rooms, a high vaulted ceiling and room for about 100 people. Here, live music performances, film screenings and art shows that require more expansive wall space will be held.

“I wanted that space to be community oriented. That was crucial to me,” Foster said. “The space needs to be something that draws people to Livingston Manor and benefits everybody’s business and quality of life.”

Peez Leweez has been displaying locally produced art since it opened, and the outlet has furnished proof of the population of emerging and established artists in Livingston Manor and the region.

“It’s been two and a half years now, and we’ve never had to repeat an artist. I was surprised at how easily that came to us,” Foster said. “There is definitely a demand for branching out.”

Foster said he wants Livingston Manor to improve its potential to attract a young, hip demographic.

“If that becomes the definition of Livingston Manor, then it actually helps everything else out,” he said.

Barnett added, “It’s not like we’re creating something that doesn’t exist. We’re just allowing it to come forward.”

It’s hardly coincidental that the name “Dry Goods” contrasts with Livingston Manor’s long-time identity as a fly fishing destination.

“We kicked around a bunch of name ideas and voted. Everything in the community is fishing or river related, so we thought we could use a contrast,” Christensen said.

When he was thinking of names to suggest, Christensen made use of a Sullivan County directory from the 1870s. He was “struck” by the number of dry-goods establishments in the county, and the group thought it would be fetching to resurrect the once-common label.

The name might also offer a taste of comic relief to local residents, who have been through two disastrous floods in the past year.

Both Barnett and Christensen spent over 20 years working for magazines— Barnett in production and Christensen in design—and so they naturally approach the business of managing a gallery with a magazine sensibility. They have organized the first show in such a way that it presents a central, focusing theme.

“The show’s artists examine the forms and meanings of public events as diverse as rock concerts, Turkish wrestling matches, political demonstrations, weddings, county fairs and parades,” Christensen said. “It does put you, the viewer, at the central point with a lot of spokes radiating outward. And you can go in a lot of different directions. It’s fun to let your brain walk down those different paths. That’s one of the cool things about this show.”

Intersecting with the Trout Parade, the show is antithetical to more traditional, isolated exhibits dominated by the perspective of one artist.

“When you walk into the gallery, you can kind of follow each artist down a different path and imagine what public spectacle means to them,” Christensen said.

And Dry Goods will offer one other path this weekend.

Adjacent to the gallery, at 41B Main Street, artist David Sandlin has created The Pur-Ton-O’-Fun-Co. Reading Room out of a dusty retail space. The installation displays Sandlin’s fictional comic stories, some of which present satirical commentary on evangelical Christianity. Sandlin’s work is featured in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He owns a home in Roscoe, NY.

Barnett said Dry Goods has plans to involve the community’s youth in arts and cultural experiences. Board member Virginia McEnerney of Brooklyn is planning a program that would periodically bring kids from Brooklyn to Livingston Manor to enjoy the arts and outdoors as well as provide kids from Livingston Manor with opportunities to visit museums and galleries in Brooklyn.

The opening for artists showing in both Main Street galleries will be held on Saturday, June 11 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Dry Goods is open Fridays and Saturdays from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m. and Sundays from 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m., or by appointment.

Sponsors and volunteers are welcome. For more information call Hamish and Henry Booksellers at 845/439-8029.