Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 24, 1994 TAG: 9408240018
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-14 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Casimir Co.is owned by graphic design artist Pat Gooch and her husband, Michael Dowell, who is also director of the Fine Arts Center of the New River Valley farther down the street. Dowell spent days at the Fine Arts Center and nights hammering and sawing to renovate the new enterprise.
The store at 69 W. Main St. is named for Count Casimir Pulaski, the Polish nobleman who died helping the early colonies win the Revolutionary War and for whom the county and town of Pulaski are named. Even so, some who have heard the name have anticipated ``cashmere'' woolen goods when the store opens.
Actually, there will be a few items of imported clothing along with art work, folk art and crafts from throughout the world.
Dowell and Gooch are collectors of fairly primitive folk art, and hope to line up such items later. The store has opened with framing services and will build up inventories in everything else.
Gooch hopes Casimir Co. might also be good for other downtown stores. When people come in to have something framed, she said, ``they might wander around and find things they didn't know were here.''
The store also offers a selection of books by Virginia outdoors columnist and author Bob Gooch, who is Pat Gooch's father. She was the designer for some of the books.
Framing, she said, ``will be the bread and butter'' of the store. She hoped its other items will complement what is available in neighboring stores such as Colony of Virginia and Upstairs/Downstairs.
``We also want to showcase artists' and crafts people's works,'' she said. The Fine Arts Center already does that for arts and crafts folks in the New River Valley but ``we can go outside that area.''
Their first gallery show is an exhibit of paintings and designs by Fred Tyson Gaylor, a friend of the couple from Charlotte, N.C.
Gooch said she and Dowell have been involved with the arts all of their lives, and have built friendships with arts and crafts people throughout the country and beyond.
They met in Charlotte, where Dowell was general manager for a children's theater where she did graphic and design work. ``I've done nonprofit art things for years,'' she said.
They moved to Rural Retreat a few years ago, and came by the Fine Arts Center to try and find out what kind of jobs might be open in the arts. As it happened, the center was looking for a director.
It was not long before Roscoe Cox, then director of Pulaski's Main Street program, began pitching ideas at them for various businesses they could start here.
by CNB