Plum Gallery adds burst of creativity to Water Street in Williamstown

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Generations of Williamstown children knew the clapboarded building at 112 Water St. as Fanny Tash’s store. One of them was photographer Nicholas Whitman who, growing up on nearby Hoxsey Street, found the store a prime source of penny candy. Now Whitman, a noted photographer, and his wife, artist Mary E. Natalizia, have opened a gallery in the former store and part of the adjoining 18th-century house, where their opening exhibit showcases 13 artists. They kept the long, gleaming wooden counter from the old store as a centerpiece for the room where bright and bold paintings hang on white walls, and ceramics inspired by antique botanical prints cluster in the windows. Plum Gallery is the result of not only the pair’s creativity, but grueling physical labor as they transformed the space into a bright, airy venue for a range of art. “It’s a great old building, and it was for sale forever,” said Whitman. “Nick did all the restoration, everything except the electrical wiring, plumbing and sheetrocking,” said Natalizia. “It’s a real team effort.” “This place was a diamond in the rough,” said Whitman. “We filled up more than 15 dumpsters, and it did need some jacking, and it needed a lot of siding. “It’s solid, just not real square,” he said. “I tried to do a really sensitive restoration job,” he said. In the former store, the gallery’s main space, the bead-board ceiling had, fortunately, never been painted. Sheetrock panels were installed on the walls to screw paintings into. And in the second room, up a step, in the adjoining house, Whitman pulled down the ceiling and found chestnut beams — “extinct, beautiful and rot-resistant” — bearing the marks of the broad-ax that formed them. “All I did was vacuum, scrub and oil them,” said Whitman. Whitman said he enjoyed his work on the house, which was part of a mill complex on the Green River, and the 1922 store building. Whitman has a recently-released book on The Porches, the new inn in North Adams across from MASS MoCA. He has also done a book on MASS MoCA, documented the former, and now demolished opera house, and is in the middle of a project on the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. “It was really interesting to put the camera down and take the place apart,” he said. Natalizia, a painter, is on leave from teaching in Pownal, Vt. She said the idea for the gallery grew naturally “out of our interests in art.” “Most of the people in this show are also friends,” she said. “This is heartfelt art,” she said. “It’s not just a pretty picture, it’s the artists’ response to the world. It speaks to your heart, and you feel you’re tapping into the moment.” “We do have strong opinions about art, and we thought ‘wouldn’t it be nice to give people a place to show?’ This winter, we just decided that we’d go for it.” In one of the front windows is a sculpture of welded copper, the work of Greg Smith of Pownal. His stainless-steel sculpture is on the front lawn. Ceramic floral-derived shapes by Nermin Kura, who is from Turkey and went to the Rhode Island School of Design, is ornamented with designs inspired by calligraphy. “It’s so strong,” said Natalizia. “It’s wild stuff.” Much of her own work, she said, is based on floral shapes, and often includes fragments of poetry or journal entries. “This is very particular artwork,” she said of the work in the show. “It doesn’t take anything for granted. It tells something about how you feel, or tells something about the particular time, or the day.” Also on view are drawings and a print by Timothy Hawksworth, who, she said, “works only from memory.” A collage by Martin Bromirski includes “canvas cut and rewoven,” she said. “He’s obsessed with materials.” Steel gray and black shapes, sculpture by Makoto Yabe, who has work at RISD, the DeCordova in Lincoln, and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, seems to prefigure the mourning in the wake of the Sept. 11 loss of life, although they were made beforehand, she said. Whitman’s platinum prints in the gallery include woods in North Berkshire and sculptural rock faces, some shot in Labrador, some strongly cubist. They are pleased with the reception so far, and enthusiastic about the endeavor. “I love to arrange things,” said Natalizia. “I saw this work and really loved it. It felt like it was a risk at first, but when we made the decision, it’s great. And we had good sales the first week.” The opening reception was May 23. Gallery hours are Wednesdays through Sundays 11-5 and by appointment. Telephone is 458-3389; web site www.plumbgallery.com.
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Freight Yard Pub Serving the Community for Decades

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff

One of the eatery's menu mainstays is the popular French onion soup. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Freight Yard Pub has been serving the community for decades with a welcoming atmosphere and homemade food.
 
Siblings Sean and Colleen Taylor are the owners Freight Yard Pub. They took it over with their brother Kevin and Colleen's first husband in 1992. The two came from Connecticut and Boston to establish a restaurant and said they immediately felt welcomed in their new home.
 
"The reception that the community gave us in the beginning was so warm and so welcoming that we knew we found home," Colleen Taylors said. "We've made this area our homes since then, as a matter of fact, all of our friends and relationships came out of Freight Yard Pub."
 
The pub is located in Western Gateway Heritage State Park, and its decor is appropriately train-themed, as the building it's in used to be part of the freight yard, but it also has an Irish pub feel. It is the only original tenant still operating in the largely vacant park. The Taylors purchased the business after it had several years of instability and closures; they have run it successfully for more than three decades.
 
Colleen and Sean have been working together since they were teenagers. They have operated a few restaurants, including the former Taylor's on Holden Street, and currently operate takeout restaurant Craft Food Barn, Trail House Kitchen & Bar and Berkshire Catering Co. 
 
"Sean and I've been working together. Gosh, I think since we were 16, and we have a wonderful business relationship, where I know what I cover, he knows what he covers," she said. "We chat every single day, literally every day we have a morning phone call to say, OK, checking in."
 
The two enjoy being a part of the community and making sure to lend a hand to those who made them feel so welcome in the first place.
 
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