The building that is now home to the Up Front Exhibition Space in Port Jervis was on the verge of being condemned in 2007. But when Debbie Raia and her partner Gordon Graff saw it, they seized the opportunity to buy it and fix it up.
At first they didn’t know what to do with it.
“He said, ‘Let’s do an art gallery.’ I said, ‘What? In Port Jervis?’” Raia recounts.
They didn’t have any funds but that was no obstacle. They used everything from old stair treads to wooden planks that were part of an old porch floor and “everything else that you could think of ” to make the walls, which are now painted white.
They opened in 2008 with about 20 artists. They “somehow made it through the recession” and the gallery has since grown almost past its capacity.
