Catskill Art Society celebrates move

More room, more programs, more art

By FRITZ MAYER

LIVINGSTON MANOR, NY — It won’t be the first gallery grab staged by the society, but it will likely be the best attended.

What’s a gallery grab? Here’s the explanation from Kathryn Tufano, executive director of the Catskill Art Society: Participants buy benefit tickets for $100, are wined and dined with hors d’oeuvres and champagne, “and at a certain point, there will be a little spinner, guests’ names will be picked out of the spinner, and they’ll have 10 seconds to grab a piece of work off the wall. So everyone goes home with a piece of artwork.”

It sounds a little like the ’70s television show Supermarket Sweepstakes, but with a more sophisticated crowd. Tufano said many area artists donated work to the cause, ranging from watercolors to blown glass pieces to pottery and even a chair.

The grab will take place on October 13, but the celebration doesn’t end there. The next day, there will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a reception for the society’s newly renovated facility on Main Street in Livingston Manor. The occasion is the opening of the gallery’s new building.

The 35-year-old organization was housed in the Sullivan County Museum in Hurleyville, and members started looking for a larger space to allow for the expansion of programs. They found the building in Livingston Manor, which was formerly a movie theater and an auction house. The building was owned by the Livingston Manor Development Corporation, which is owned by investor Andrew Kreiger.

Tufano said the corporation renovated the building to the society’s specifications, and rented it to them. “They’ve been very generous with us,” she said. The result of that generosity is a 4,500-square-foot building that will feature a fine art gallery, a pottery studio, two classrooms and a gift shop.

Tufano said the space is more than twice as large as the previous space in Hurleyville, and will allow the organization to expand the number and variety of classes it offers.

For Tufano, not only the building is new, so is her relationship with the Catskill Art Society. She and her significant other, Rich Pereira, moved up to the area full time on July 1, after buying a house in Claryville for weekend getaways in February 2006. In New York City, she worked at Exit Art, a 17,000-square-foot gallery in Hell’s Kitchen. Before that, she worked for 35 years as a professional dancer.

She said she doesn’t view the growing number of galleries in the area as competition.

“Good art is good for everybody; the more art is in people’s consciousness, the better it is for everybody. This is a good opportunity to bring more art to this area, and so far we’ve had a wonderfully welcoming response from Livingston Manor.”

Bamboo floors

The new floors of the building are made of bamboo boards, which are touted as a sustainable solution for new flooring systems.

Botanically speaking, bamboo is a grass and not a wood at all. But it’s a good building material because it is very hard and strong. It’s also friendly to the environment. After a shoot matures, in about three years in varieties used for flooring material, the shoot dies, and it is beneficial to the bamboo plant to have the shoot removed.

After harvesting, the bamboo is cut into strips, dried, and then laminated to create boards.

According to the web site www.buildinggreen.com, bamboo plants require very little fertilizers or pesticides.

The site further says that nearly all of the bamboo flooring sold in the United States comes from the southern Chinese province of Hunan. The harvesting of this particular type of bamboo is not a threat to panda bears, as some people believe, because pandas live at higher elevations and eat a different species of bamboo.