Art —> to Empty Buildings

by Jay Blotcher, December 28, 2011

It’s an inescapable truism in the eternal battle between art and commerce: When real estate falters, the art world prospers. Consider Manhattan’s East Village in the 1980s, when shooting galleries thrived next door to storefront galleries along the war zone known as Alphabet City. As rents skyrocketed, however, those crucibles of new creativity were transformed into trendy cafés and boutiques.

Main Street in Catskill, while not an al fresco drug den, has fallen in its fortunes as of late. The result is many empty storefronts. But thanks to a group of visionaries from the Greene County Arts Council, a fiscal downside has been transformed into an artistic renaissance. The Masters on Main Street project filled those empty windows with the artwork of college artists still hungry enough to create art for free and still brash enough to make statements calculated to unnerve. That project spawned a film festival last year, showcasing 20 works.

“We’re trying to make lemonade here,” explains Arts Council officer Fawn Potash in an e-mail interview. “Our mission is to showcase fresh art forms and ideas from studio programs across the country, inspiring new interest in Main Street by engaging local audiences and visitors from outside the area.”

The Arts Council will hold the second annual Catskill Film and Video Festival (CFVF) on January 29, featuring 32 works by 34 artists.

This year’s festival was curated by Jacqueline Weaver, a video artist from the College of Saint Rose’s MA program. Weaver has mounted several exhibitions in the Capital Region and her short video Gaza, January 3, 2009 was featured on the PBS series “TV Film.” In her festival selections, Weaver strives to elevate the reputation of video. “For the video work, I wanted to choose pieces that would show the versatility of video art,” Weaver says. “I think video art often has a bad reputation for being sloppy, and I wanted to chooses pieces that might help change this opinion.”