Beneath the artistic persona and purple hair of Greenfield Gallery co-owner Rachael Katz is the mind of an engineer, literally.
Before opening the art business with photographer Kate Hunter, who runs the gallery’s printers, Katz spent a successful career working as a mechanical engineer.
On a recent day, Katz stood inside the Main Street gallery surrounded by local art hanging on white walls. It’s Katz’s latest business venture, and a far cry from where she started.
“I’m an actor, I’m a singer, I may in fact be a radio personality soon. I’m a real estate developer, I’m a gallery owner, and I’m an aspiring artist,” she said, before leading the way past a few leather art pieces made by Turners Falls artist Andrew Mangold through a doorway to her personal studio in the next room.
Katz, a Maryland native, is a self-titled “maker,” and her studio space reflects that. Sitting on shelves around the room are myriad random machines, including a sewing machine, two 3D printers, a lathe, and a few completely computerized metalworking machines.
“Here’s my metal cutting chop saw, here’s my sewing machine, they sit on the same shelf,” she said. “In my world, machines don’t have genders. Making is making.”
Using the various machines, Katz creates everything from prosthetic limb prototypes to camera parts, leather stamps and art.
“I’ve worked in everything from exotic metals to plastics. Anything with a 3D aspect,” she said. “About the only thing I don’t do is drawing and painting in the traditional sense.”
After graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York with a degree in mechanical engineering, Katz started a hybrid car business — “before it was ‘cool.’”
The business fell through and she used her degree to launch into mechanical engineering. She worked at a few different businesses, including one that had a contract making components used in nuclear missiles.
“One day, they gave me a pile of (computer) parts that would be part of the decision-making process of a nuclear launch. I did the Y2K upgrades on ‘the button,’” Katz said.
Later, she helped start KatzEye Optics in 2005, producing specialized custom focusing components for DSLR cameras for more than a decade until 2015, a venture that proved successful.
“I took an old piece of technology and jammed it into a modern camera,” Katz said. “Unlike the first venture, this was successful beyond my needs. Within 10 years I had paid off my house. Then I bought the building.”
Over the years, Katz has lived around the United States, including a stint in California, eventually settling in Franklin County because of a supportive art community, she said.
“Even the non-artistic community says ‘thank you’ for investing in the community,” Katz noted. “I chose to live here. I picked it deliberately.”
These days, Katz’s mission is to revitalize the local art scene by giving Franklin County artists a place to display and sell their work. To that end, she co-owns the gallery, rents studio space in the gallery’s building, serves on Greenfield’s Cultural District Committee, and is working to establish a downtown business group, among other community organizations.
You can reach Andy Castillo
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