Since its opening in 2011, One Mile, the gallery and home of filmmaker Eddie Mullins and gallery owner Janet Hicks, is an icon of the Hudson Valley\u2019s creative energy. The gallery shows some of the area\u2019s edgiest art, often imported from New York City, and its openings, which spill out from the subterranean gallery space onto a terraced bluestone patio, are among the most vibrant.<\/p>\n
![\"_DSC0130.1\"](\"http:\/\/upstater.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/DSC0130.1-520x781.jpg\")
Part of One Mile\u2019s appeal is its novel setting on a narrow road that snakes along the Rondout Creek, near a row of old, mostly abandoned frame houses, in the shadow of a 100-year-old railroad trestle. When a train rumbles overhead, what could be construed as a depressed former industrial river town becomes a sublime theatrical backdrop.![\"_DSC9622.1\"](\"http:\/\/upstater.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/DSC9622.1-520x356.jpg\")
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But another part of the appeal is Hicks, who\u2019s cosmopolitan and stylish but whose friendliness puts visitors at ease. Despite her full-time job in New York City at Artists Rights Society, negotiating contracts and licensing deals on behalf of blue-chip artists\u2019 estates (including Picasso, Matisse, and Warhol), Hicks\u2019s commitment to One Mile has enriched the local art scene, as has Mullins\u2019s filmmaking. He spends most of his time upstate, where he filmed Doomsdays<\/i>, a post apocalyptic comedy released last summer that\u2019s won praise from the New York Times<\/i>, and is working on two new film projects, one a detective story, the other a western.<\/p>\n
Hicks grew up in California, studied art history at the University of Oregon, and moved to New York in 1997 to work for an architectural theory magazine. Mullins grew up in Richmond, Virginia, studied film at New York University, and worked at ABC News. He left New York to complete a master\u2019s in literature at Northwestern University, then was a tractor driver on a Northern California farm and a stringer and a teacher in Buenos Aires, before returning to New York to work as a film critic.<\/p>\n
![\"_DSC9631.1\"](\"http:\/\/upstater.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/DSC9631.1-520x342.jpg\")
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In 2009, Hicks and Mullins moved in together in Park Slope and began looking for a weekend house upstate. The house on the Rondout Creek fit the bill perfectly: Formerly owned by a sculptor with a ground-floor studio, it was built in 1790\u2014antique beams are exposed in the second-floor kitchen and living room, which is filled with original art\u2014but the house \u201cwasn\u2019t so precious that we couldn\u2019t renovate it,\u201d Hicks notes.<\/p>\n
Mullins and Hicks didn\u2019t know a soul when they arrived, but a New York Times<\/i> article\u00a0that profiled their weekend home, and the gallery\u2019s opening created many connections. \u201cHaving a business here has been amazing,\u201d says Mullins. \u201cWe knew everybody very quickly by setting up shop\u2014if you build it, they will come.\u201d Mullins\u2019s longtime acquaintance with Tod Lippy, editor of\u00a0Esopus<\/i>\u00a0magazine, led to the gallery\u2019s biggest coup: the representation of artist-photographer Mark Hogancamp, whose life was chronicled in the documentary\u00a0Marwencol<\/i> (which is also the inspiration for a Hollywood drama in development, starring Steve Carrell). On disability since being brutally beaten outside a local bar 15 years ago, Hogancamp creates and photographs lifelike tableaux of dolls and props he sets up in a miniature, World War II Belgian village he has constructed on his property. Taking on Hogancamp was a complex venture, given the artist\u2019s sustained brain injuries, PTSD, and rising fame. But Hicks and Mullins take it all in stride, buying groceries and cigarettes for Hogancamp (who doesn\u2019t drive), and taking him to New York showings of his work.<\/p>\n
Mullins and Hicks\u2019s brick house on the outskirts of Kingston\u2019s Downtown, one of the Hudson Valley\u2019s hipper districts, may seem like an outlier, but Uptown isn\u2019t far away. Mullins sometimes walks up South Wall Street to Stockade Tavern, stopping to visit friends on the way back or catching a cab from the Trailways bus depot.<\/p>\n
![\"_DSC9596.1\"](\"http:\/\/upstater.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/DSC9596.1-520x374.jpg\")
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![\"_DSC9578.1\"](\"http:\/\/upstater.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/DSC9578.1-520x347.jpg\")
\u201cAll the things people dislike about this place were things I loved,\u201d Hicks says. \u201cIt feels like a different century.\u201d Compared to the din of Brooklyn, the passing trains are white noise, she notes. Someday, she\u2019d like to purchase the dilapidated house next door to expand the gallery and show larger work. In the meantime, Hicks has her eye on a small clearing up the steep forested hill behind One Mile, which is approached by a stone staircase. \u201cIt\u2019s a great place for us to do archery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since its opening in 2011, One Mile, the gallery and home of filmmaker Eddie Mullins and gallery owner Janet Hicks, is an icon of the Hudson Valley\u2019s creative energy. The gallery shows some of the area\u2019s edgiest art, often imported from New York City, and its openings, which spill out from the subterranean gallery space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":266,"featured_media":50384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1150,1476,1057,102],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n