The reception for this exhibition is Thursday, June 11, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Palumbo was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941. A self-taught painter and former photo-retoucher for the New York Journal American, Palumbo was a student at Pratt Institute and The School of Visual Arts before entering the advertising profession, first at Ogilvy Mather and then at Wells, Rich and Green. He and his partner founded a gallery, “Say it in Neon,” in Greenwich Village.

In 1991, they purchased the old Methodist Church in Colrain where they continued the neon gallery and launched a restaurant, the Green Emporium. In 2001, Palumbo began painting again. The partners closed the restaurant in 2006 and then re-opened the building as a gallery for Palumbo’s neon art and paintings.

“I consider myself a realist,” he says, “with a bit of fantasy thrown in.” Palumbo recently finished a series of paintings based on the original “Grey Gardens” documentary that was produced by Albert and David Maysles in 1975. “Grey Gardens,” which depicts the everyday lives of a reclusive socialite mother and daughter who live in a decrepit mansion in East Hampton, New York, has also become an HBO film as well as a play, on and off Broadway, and a musical. Palumbo hopes to show his Grey Gardens paintings in New York or, perhaps, on Long Island where much of the Grey Gardens story takes place.

Palumbo's exhibition at the Center features a series of vibrant and colorful images depicting the rituals,traditions and relationships of an extended Italian American family in the mid-20th century in Brooklyn, New York. It powerfully evokes the nostalgia and emotions many of us feel who have grown up as part of an immigrant family in urban America.