Gregory James Gallery Is Expanding in New Location

 

Gregory James art gallery and custom framing operation are moving and expanding in a location less than a mile away on Route 202.

Owner Greg Mullen purchased and renovated the former Concept Interiors building at 149 Park Lane Rd. and a mid-June move is planned, with a late June reopening anticipated.

The current gallery and framing shop at 93 Park Lane Rd. will remain open until shortly before the move begins. Artwork on the walls in the current gallery is being offered at 15 percent off.

Stay tuned for the reopening date, as well as details about a new exhibit and special reception to welcome clients, gallery artists, and the public to the new space.

“I’m excited about the move and the opportunity to offer more shows, especially because it’s happening in the 25^th anniversary year of Gregory James Gallery,” Mullen said. “Our framing business has been extremely busy, but on the gallery side we have been a bit quiet since the beginning of the pandemic in terms of presenting new shows. The new location provides two expansive galleries where we’ll display more works by gallery regulars and artists new to the gallery.”

The pandemic may have slowed the flow of shows at the gallery, but artists including Jim Laurino and Thomas Adkins—two of western Connecticut’s finest landscape painters—have continually brought in new works to be displayed.

The gallery also features a selection of more contemporary artists, including the late Ralph Della Volpe, an unsung modern master from Millbrook, N.Y., who based paintings on something in nature that elicited an exciting emotional sensation. He championed color, pattern, form, and light and shadows, and achieved creative freedom by using color in an arbitrary manner.

And then there’s the late Woldemar Neufeld, perhaps the gallery’s signature artist. Born in 1909 in Russia, Neufeld moved to Ontario, Canada, in 1924, attended night school at the Ontario College of Art, and eventually came to New York and then New Milford in 1949, where he and established a studio, gallery, and summer art school.

Gregory James Gallery has long been a primary source for original Neufeld linocuts and watercolors—depicting iconic scenes in New York City, New Milford, New Preston and Washington, and Watch Hill, R.I.—and the gallery currently has more than 50 Neufeld originals available.

That may sound like an impressive number but it doesn’t come close to the number of choices when it comes to the gallery’s selection of fine art frames, which includes 4,000 samples.

The gallery offers great design, value, and museum quality materials and techniques in providing custom framing, as well as advice on art restoration, while also collaborating with a local art installation group.

How It Started

In the early 1990s, Mullen was working on interior renovation and design projects for the Nestlé R&D plant in New Milford, which included the selection of art and framing as finishing touches.

At the same time, another idea was taking shape in his mind. He got to know Eileen and George Fast of the Park Lane Gallery and developed relationships with local artists.

This experience inspired him to take a leap and begin training in the art of custom framing, earning a certificate from the Larson-Juhl Custom Framers Training Program in September 1996.

He also worked at Nutmeg Gallery in Kent to gain experience, and initially did framing after work at Nestlé, from 5 to 9, and on weekends.

“It’s sort of a natural progression,” Mullen said of relocating the gallery to successively larger and more visible spaces, having mounted four to five new exhibits each year totaling nearly 100 to date.

That natural progression will now continue seven-tenths of a mile up Route 202.

The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. The phone number (which will remain the same) is 860-354-3436, the email is GregoryJamesG@aol.com, and the website is gregoryjamesgallery.com.