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'SRO Gallery' Opens Single-Room Exhibition Space in Crown Heights

 Artist Cecilia Whittaker-Doe reads 26 lines of poetry by Eugenio Montale included in paintings by Archie Rand now on view at SRO Gallery in Crown Heights, which she opened last weekend with her husband, painter Don Doe, on Dean Street.
Artist Cecilia Whittaker-Doe reads 26 lines of poetry by Eugenio Montale included in paintings by Archie Rand now on view at SRO Gallery in Crown Heights, which she opened last weekend with her husband, painter Don Doe, on Dean Street.
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DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

CROWN HEIGHTS — A new gallery space opened in the neighborhood this weekend, bringing an “eclectic” mix of artwork to a single room in a Dean Street townhouse, its owner said.

The SRO Gallery opened Friday at 1144 Dean St. between Rogers and Nostrand avenues in Crown Heights, named for the subdivided, single-room occupancy residences once common in the area, said artist Cecilia Whittaker-Doe who runs the new space with her husband, painter Don Doe.

“We really want to open up to many different kinds of work — work that we feel needs to be shown,” she said, including printmaking, drawing or sculpture.

Currently, the gallery is exhibiting 24 paintings by Brooklyn-born artist Archie Rand, each corresponding with a line of the Eugenio Montale poem “Men Who Turn Back.”

“He’s always been a great inspiration to me as an artist, as a person, as someone who’s come into my studio and given me feedback with integrity,” Whittaker-Doe said of Rand. “I wanted to open with something powerful and solid.”

The Rand exhibition will be on view through May 25, she said. New work will rotate in at SRO every four to six weeks in the first-floor gallery space, one floor up from where Whittaker-Doe and her husband have used studio space for 16 years; they live nearby, on Park Place.

A resident of Brooklyn for more than 25 years, she sees her neighborhood and the Gowanus area as locations of blossoming art scenes — which may have even more reason to grow soon.

“Bushwick has already arrived and the L train is going to shut down for a couple of years, unfortunately. I love the galleries in Bushwick … but this area now, places are starting to pop up,” she said of Crown Heights, citing the newly opened happylucky no.1 gallery located a few blocks away on Nostrand Avenue, 10 Grand Press, also on Dean Street, and the GRIDSPACE gallery on Rogers Avenue.

SRO Gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 6 p.m. and by appointment. For more information, visit srogallery.com.