Show Before the Show: Tribeca Artist Treks to Gallery 'The Way We Used To'

With her 16 volunteer canvas carriers behind her on Franklin Street, Kate Maracle waits to give the go-ahead to cross Church Street and continue on to Townley Gallery. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Kate Maracle [1], a painter who has been living in Tribeca for nearly 30 years, says she misses the old “rough and ready days” of the neighborhood when young artists like her were DIY with most facets of their creative lives. And so she was ready to rough it a bit again on Sunday March 1 for her current show at Townley Gallery [2], 7 Franklin Pl. Rather than have her large figurative works professionally wrapped and trucked to the gallery from her apartment/studio on North Moore Street, she turned the delivery into an art walk of a diffeent sort.

Sixteen volunteers, many recruited by Maracle’s 22-year-old daughter, Scarlett Walsh, made the short, attention-grabbing parade of paintings to the gallery. “This is the way I always did things as an artist; as a young painter we did everything ourselves,” Maracle said. “We weren’t so precious. Everything wasn’t insured and bubble-wrapped three times. We just did it.”

“I thought it would be really fun to bring them over the old way,” she added.

Turns out, the artist said, it was more frightening than fun, at least for her.  “I was holding my breath the whole time, although all our friends had a blast.”

The wind picked up at the corner of North Moore and Varick, and that was the scariest part, she said. “I had a vision of the paintings going Mary Poppins-style along with some of my friends,” she recalled, “all the way down Varick Street.”

“Feed the Wolf,” paintings by Kate Maracle, are on view through March 15 at Townley Gallery [2], entrances at 373 Broadway and 7 Franklin Pl.