Furniture Maker, Artist To Speak at Art Garage

MIDDLEFIELD—Middlefield residents William “Bill” Ralston and Molly Welch Whyte will informally discuss their individual creative approaches on Saturday, March 29 at 11:30 a.m. at The Art Garage. Ralston is a skilled furniture maker who specializes in an 18th-century style, while Welch Whyte creates cutting-edge contemporary art. Following their informal remarks, Ralston will illustrate some of his work.

The show also features five additional artists/craftsmen: Harriet Brown, Cleo Mook, Steve Shauger, Linda Tracz and Nanci Wentworth.

Space is limited and reservations are recommended for those who wish to sit. The gallery will open at 11 a.m., when visitors will have a chance to view the exhibition, “Made in Middlefield III.”

The Art Garage is open Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and daily with an appointment by e-mailing leArtGarage@gmail.com or calling (607) 547-5327. Guests are reminded to not park on the town road for public safety. “Made in Middlefield III” will be on display through Tuesday, April 15.

According to a press release, Molly Welch Whyte grew up in Cooperstown and her family has lived in the area for generations. When still in high school she frequently worked at Pioneer Photo on Pioneer Street and learned a great deal from the owner. She is a graduate of The Cooper Union for The Advancement of Science and Art in New York City and worked in Brooklyn for a number of years, supporting her own studio practice through day jobs.

She has worked at Box Studios, a photo retouching house founded by industry pioneer Pascal Dangin, who frequently collaborated with “Vogue” and “Vanity Fair.” For a decade, she also served as the studio manager and oversaw design work for publications and exhibitions for Brigitte Lacombe, an internationally acclaimed photographer celebrated for her portraits of artists, filmmakers, and politicians such as Meryl Streep and Martin Scorsese.

Though this career was rewarding, it wasn’t the same as making her own art and often siphoned time from Welch Whyte’s own studio practice. Her work in “Made in Middlefield III”-—a collage pie-graph of 30 pieces made from a rejected edition print—explores this time period and the conflict between necessary employment and independent practice faced by many artists.

“[‘Water Measure’and its companion piece] are part of a body of work made from the material detritus generated from jobs I was paid to produce outside of my own studio,” Welch Whyte explained. “At the time, I was working in the service of other artists and, while I admired their work, it robbed me of the priceless commodity of time in my own studio.”

She continued, “I was obsessed with reclaiming my time and compelled to collect and reassign meaning to the trash and ephemera the job generated.”

The two pieces also reflect Welch Whyte’s abiding interest in water, which often appears in her work. She has moved back to the Cooperstown area, where she lives full time in Middlefield with her young family.

Bill Ralston grew up in Irondequoit, where his father worked for Kodak. He earned a teaching degree at Colgate University to become a science teacher upstate. Fairly quickly he left that profession and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he developed a new career as a furniture maker. He lived in a commune—a fairly common living arrangement at the time. Over a period of eight years he learned the exacting standards perpetuated by the centuries-old Guild system that still exists in Europe. His teacher was an old world German master craftsman.

The shop specialized in reproducing high-style 18th-century American antiques. There, Ralston worked alongside 12 other employees, including skilled European craftsmen. He thrived in his new career, moved north and opened his own shop—first in Cherry Valley, then in Cooperstown. Today his shop is on State Route 28, across the road from The Commons.

Ralston continues to reproduce high-style 18th-century American antiques with an emphasis on neoclassical Federal furniture. He developed a second specialty through a series of commissions in the Gothic and Gothic Revival styles. Lyndhurst, a National Trust for Historic Preservation site in Tarrytown, New York, features a number of Ralston reproductions in the Gothic Revival style. Many Cooperstown homes feature his reproductions.

Ralston works from measured drawings, existing pieces of furniture, photographs, sketches and even occasionally verbal descriptions. He generally provides a drawing, often full scale, for approval, before starting work.

“Over the years, it’s been the process, not the finished product—working efficiently and effectively—that has been the most fun,” he noted.

The Art Garage exhibition features three 18th-century style items including a dressing mirror, two jewelry boxes emblazoned with a quilt pattern in a variety of woods and a cocktail tray that suggests the 1930s.

The Art Garage has been serving the area and artists for the past 15 years and hosts many free programs, including artists’ talks and panel discussions. Open year round, its lively exhibitions have varied—from bringing to the area the international artist Adam Masava, from Kenya, as a community-artist-in-residence to featuring contemporary and self-taught art.

The Art Garage organized “Made in Middlefield” Parts I and II in 2024 to celebrate the community. Artists and artisans in Middlefield who work with any material, whether traditional or off-beat, trained or self-taught, are encouraged to contact The Art Garage if they have an art or craft they’d like to discuss for a future iteration of the annual display.