LAKEVILLE — After at least 10 years of planning and maneuvering, two units of affordable housing are ready for occupants.
The commissioner of the state Department of Housing, Seila Mosquera-Bruno, was among the interested parties at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the building site on Perry Street in Lakeville, along with State Rep. Maria Horn (D-64), Salisbury First Selectman Curtis Rand, Jocelyn Ayer from the Litchfield County Center for Housing Opportunity and Jennifer Kronholm Clark of the Salisbury Housing Trust and the Salisbury Affordable Housing Commission.
Rand recalled the town eventually foreclosing on the property, the site of a long-shuttered dry-cleaning establishment.
He said things came to a head when the roof caved in.
He tracked down the owner in Arizona, and asked if there was any chance of receiving the $60,000 or so in back taxes. “He said ‘no way,’ so we foreclosed.”
Rand said it had been so long since the business closed that clothing was found, packaged and still ready for pickup. “I delivered them.”
Things got complicated because of worries about contamination from the chemicals used in the dry-cleaning process. Grants were obtained. Environmental testing was done.
And finally the site’s new owners, the Salisbury Housing Trust, was able to put up the two three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes, which marked the end of an effort that began in earnest in 2013.
The two homes are Perry Street have three bedrooms, two full bathrooms and unfinished basements.Patrick L. Sullivan
Clark said they’re not quite done. Carports with solar panels will be put up shortly.
Clark thanked everyone for their efforts. “This is perseverance in brick and mortar form.”
She said affordable housing groups in other towns often ask how Salisbury has made progress in creating a variety of affordable housing options.
“The only difference between our town and theirs is we started earlier, 25 years ago.”
Ayer said the two Lakeville units are part of a group of 10 affordable housing units in Litchfield County.
She praised the builders, Signature Building Systems, for their quick and efficient work in putting up the modular units.
Ayer had a gift for the housing commissioner, Mosquera-Bruno.
“If you come to Litchfield County in July or August, you get a large zucchini from someone’s garden, in a Tractor Supply bag.”
Amid laughter she handed the vegetable over.
Mosquera-Bruno said, “It’s wonderful to see how the community comes together.”
Department of Housing Commissioner Seila Mosequera-Bruno accepted a traditional Northwest Corner gift of a large zucchini from Jocelyn Ayer.Patrick L. Sullivan
“Once Upon a Time in America” features ten portraits by artist Katro Storm.
Part of what became a capstone project for Wolgemuth, she left behind a comprehensive guide to help future student interns manage the gallery effectively. “Everything from who we should contact, the steps to take for everything, our donors,” Wilbur said. “It’s really extensive and it’s been a huge help.”
Art teacher Lilly Rand Barnett first met Storm a few years ago through his ICEHOUSE Project Space exhibition in Sharon, “Will It Grow in Sharon?” in which he planted cotton and tobacco as part of an exploration of ancestral heritage.
“And the plants did grow,” said Barnett. She asked Storm if her students could use them, and the resulting work became a project for that year’s Troutbeck Symposium, the annual student-led event in Amenia that uncovers little-known or under-told histories of marginalized communities, particularly BIPOC histories.
Last spring, Rand emailed to ask if Storm would consider a solo show at HVRHS. He agreed.
And just a few weeks ago, he arrived — paints, brushes and canvases in tow.
“When Katro came to start hanging everything, he took up a mini art residency in Ms. Rand’s room,” Wilbur said. “All her students were able to see his process and talk to him. It was great working with him.”
Perhaps more unexpected was his openness. “He really trusted us as curators and visionaries,” Wilbur said. “He said, ‘Do with it what you will.’”
Artist Katro StormNatalia Zukerman
Storm’s artistic training began at New Haven’s Educational Center for the Arts. His talent earned him a full scholarship to the Arts Institute of Boston, then Boston’s Museum School, where he painted seven oversized portraits of influential Black figures — in seven days — for his final project. Those works became the backbone of his early exhibitions, including at Howard University’s National Council for the Arts.
Storm has created several community murals like the 2009 READ Mural featuring local heroes, and several literacy and wellness murals at the Stetson Branch Library in New Haven. Today, he teaches and works, he said, “wherever I set up shop. Sometimes I go outside. Sometimes I’m on top of roofs. Wherever it is, I get the job done.”
His deep ties to education made a high school gallery an especially meaningful stop. “No one really knew who these people were except maybe John Lennon,” Storm said of the portraits in the show. “It’s really important for them to know James Baldwin and Shirley Chisholm. And now they do.”
The exhibition includes a wide list of subjects: James Baldwin, Shirley Chisholm, Redd Foxx, Jasper Johns, Marilyn Manson, William F. Buckley, Harold Hunter, John Lennon, as well as two deeply personal works — a portrait of Tracy Sherrod (“She’s a friend of mine… She had an interesting hairdo”) and a tribute to his late friend Nes Rivera. “Most of the time I choose my subjects because there are things I want to see,” Storm said.
Storm’s paintings, which he describes as “full frontal figuratism,” rely on drips, tonal shifts, and what feels like emerging depth. His process moves quickly. “It depends on how fast it needs to get done,” he said. “Sometimes I like to take the long way up the mountain. Instead of doing an outline, I just start coloring, blocking things off with light and dark until it starts to take shape.”
He’s currently in a black-and-white phase. “Right now, I’m inspired by black and white, the way I can really get contrast and depth.”
Work happens on multiple canvases at once. “Sometimes I’ll have five paintings going on at one time because I go through different moods, and then there’s the way the light hits,” he said. “It’s kind of like cooking. You’ve got a couple things going at once, a couple things cooking, and you just try to reach that deadline.”
For Wilbur, who has studied studio arts “ever since I was really young” and recently applied early decision to Vassar, the experience has been transformative. For Storm — an artist who built an early career painting seven portraits in seven days and has turned New York’s subway corridors into a makeshift museum — it has been another chance to merge artmaking with education, and to pass a torch to a new generation of curators.
