By Shannon Hicks

BETHEL — For over four years during the 1990s, Bethel’s historic railroad station on Greenwood Avenue stood empty, a monument to a bygone era of passengers picking up the train in the center of town. When the state decided to construct a new station about a half-mile down Durant Avenue, a short walk from the center of town, the fate of one of the area’s historic buildings was up in the air. When the new station opened in 1995, the old building was closed up tight and left to fall into a sad state of disrepair for a few years.

Meanwhile, artists in Bethel and surrounding towns had few options available for a forum of their own. Well-established museums and galleries are fine for artists who have already established their careers, but many artists sought an outlet for their work that was a little less conventional. Upper Fairfield County is thriving with artists of all backgrounds and genres hoping to show their work to the public, but outlets are lacking at times. In other instances, gallery rules can be restrictive for artists with work that does not fall into a well-defined category.

Fortunately there is now a new location, a co-op gallery in the center of Bethel, that welcomes all formats of artwork by artists of all ages, at all stages of their careers. Bethel Arts Junction is up and running in the familiar red and white Victorian-era building that was once a stop for trains between Danbury and Redding.

BAJ has begun presenting shows on a regularly rotating four-week basis, with opening receptions held mid-month. The current show is presenting works by the gallery’s members; next month’s show will present a look at artwork of area children. A popular poetry series has found a new home, and a local musician is selling her cassettes from within the tall walls of the railroad station’s safety.

Early last year, a longtime Greenwood Avenue gallery called Art Tenders closed its doors. For a few months, however, landlord Don Dempsey allowed former Art Tenders employees Adele Moros and Laura McCormick to present artists’ work in the former gallery space at 186 Greenwood Avenue. The women set up a temporary exhibition area in the gallery space, but knew from the onset that their time was limited.

“We knew going in that our time was limited,” Mrs Moros recently said. “We knew we were losing that outlet, and that the other artists [many of whom were also represented by Art Tenders] were also losing the outlet. So we started kicking around the idea of opening a co-op. But where?”

In addition to being the landlord for Art Tenders, Mr Dempsey was also president of Hometown Bethel, an association devoted to the beautification and upgrade of downtown Bethel. Mr Dempsey approached Mrs Moros and Mrs McCormick with an offer for the use of the town’s vacant railroad station.

“His approach,” Mrs Moros explained, “was that as long as we are open to all the arts, and we keep ourselves diversified, we could use the buiding.” The railroad station remains a state-owned building, with Hometown Bethel acting as the lease holder for Bethel Arts Junction. When the artists’ group accepted the proposal last year from Hometown Bethel, Bethel Arts Junction was officially born.

“At the same time we were born,” Mrs McCormick said, “we were also starting to clean, scrub and paint that building, inside and out.”

Because the building had been closed and boarded up for nearly five years – and in addition to being Bethel’s train station, the building was also home to a muffin shop called Station Break, which closed its doors the same day the station did, leaving a lot of residue behind – a lot of work was needed before the artists could put their new home to use as an exhibitions area. Cleaning began on July 1, and for ten straight weeks, says Mrs Moros, “there was always someone there, cleaning.”

Members, friends and family members all pitched in, cleaning out the building’s large rooms and small closets, patching the roof, installing new lighting and plumbing, and dealing with the building’s oil heater, which continues to give the group problems. But working with a shoestring budget – “We are meant to be a non-profit group,” Mrs McCormick pointed out – meant putting the oil heater on hold as far as replacement was concerned.

Because the building was not being used for anything else, a few organizations had been granted permission to use some of the building as storage space. BAJ members came across old school benches and piles of police uniforms.

“We had weeks of scrubbing and deodorizing long before we could even think about re-painting the walls or ceilings,” Mrs McCormick said.

But the weeks of effort paid off, as Bethel Arts Junction hosted its grand opening weekend in mid-October. Over the course of the October 15-17 weekend, BAJ presented an opening reception for “Seeking Higher Ground,” a celebration of the gallery’s new home and a presentation of what the eclectic gallery’s members have to offer. The show featured large and small scale works in oil, acrylic, pastels, pen and ink, graphite pencil, colored pencil, and watercolor. There was also painted furniture, papier maché, jewelry, textile design, pottery and sculpture.

The artists’ cooperative is now 20 members strong, representing artists  from Bethel, Brookfield, Danbury, Newtown, Redding, Weston and Woodbury. Adele Moros and Laura McCormick serve as co-directors and the gallery is run by a five-member board. In addition to Mrs Moros and Mrs McCormick, the board is comprised of secretary Robbin May, program coordinator Joann Simon and treasurer Deb Dagarty.

Membership is open to artists throughout the area. Those who join Bethel Art Junction pay an initiation fee and then monthly dues. The dues are used to cover the building’s rent, which goes back to Hometown Bethel. That money, says Mrs McCormick, will in turn be used toward matching grants the gallery hopes to receive from the state.

The town of Bethel is looking into receiving National Historic District designation for both the station and the downtown area in general. If this comes to pass, it would mean, among other perks, the town could receive federal funds that would in turn be used by the gallery for additional renovations.

Members are required to work two shifts during each show, and they are guaranteed to have three or four pieces  hang in every show. Also, members do not have to pay a commission back to BAJ when their work sells during a show, unlike consignors, who are non-member artists who can have their work shown if it is accepted by the board.

Consignors receive 70 percent of their artwork’s selling price; the remaining 30 percent is returned to BAJ. Consignors are also not guaranteed to have any of their work hang.

Currently on view at Bethel Arts Junction is a show called “In The Beginning…,” which presents works by the gallery’s members and some of the commissioned-in artists. The show is fun in that its main requirement for members in putting works on view was that each recent work had to be coupled with a work from the artist’s early life.

A Poet’s Permanent Home

For Newtown resident Faith Vicinanza, Bethel Arts Junction offers a permanent home – and hopefully this time around it really will be permanent – for “The Connecticut Poet” and her ongoing series of Wednesday night poetry readings.

Mrs Vicinanza has been coordinating a weekly poetry series since 1994. The series is a forum for poets and poetry enthusiasts of all levels to share their works, listen to readings by featured writers, and even critique each other’s works. The series debuted in the fall of 1994 with its readings presented at The Book Review in Newtown. Unfortunately, once the store’s owners decided to reduce their hours of operation at the Sand Hill Plaza store, which included early closings on week nights, it meant searching for a new home for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series.

Mrs Vicinanza, along with her husband Peter, the series’ original co-host, took the poetry series into Bethel, presenting readings at Dr Java’s Caffeine Emporium. The series then moved to The Chat House, a coffee house on Church Hill Road in Newtown, before eventually finding another home at Bethel Depot Artists Collective, the former gallery space of Art Tenders in Bethel.

Now that Bethel Arts Junction is up and running, it looks as if the poetry series may finally have a place it won’t have to worry moving out of any time soon.

“This affords me a permanent home for the Wednesday Poetry Series,” Mrs Vicinanza, now a member of the co-op, said recently. “And this is a space that is ours. No more fighting with venue owners or neighbors or guests who are at a venue for something else.

“And I don’t really mean fighting,” she continued. “But the space is private now, and on Wednesday nights it is a poetry space, period. And the gallery, of course. But it isn’t a coffee house – which also has its down side,” she laughed, “because there isn’t any coffee handy… But people can, and have, make tea and coffee, and people can always bring food in with them.

“It is great, great, great to have a space that is ours for our readings.”

In addition to the weekly readings, Mrs Vicinanza has hopes to begin presenting workshops. There is talk already of a spring poetry writing workshop. Mrs Vicinanza is also hoping to present a program that will join physical art with poetry, “such as a poetry and art reception, where poems are created for the artwork in a specific exhibit,” she explained, “or artwork with poetry incorporated into the work, things like that.

“The space is funky, and different members of the co-op have different ideas about how the gallery should be set up,” said the poet.

“We’re still growing,” Adele Moros said. “We don’t know where we’ll end up, of course, but we hope to continue to grow and remain open to all the arts.”