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Discovered Light: The Final Photographs of Geri Gould

Opening Reception Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 6:30 PM

Geri Gould received her first camera at age eight from her father, Joe DiCuffa. He was a professional portrait photographer in New York City and provided a solid foundation of training and inspiration.

Her photography has been exhibited and recognized by the Easton Arts Council, Citizens for Easton, Black Rock Art Guild at Burroughs Community Center, Harborview Market and Framemakers Gallery.

Greiser’s Coffee & Market is privileged to partner with Kit Briner, Geri’s longtime love and companion, to show the final series of Geri’s work, “Discovered Light.”

After Geri passed away in January 2023, fellow Easton artist Robert Brennan assisted Kit in curating Geri’s this exhibit, which will be on display from May 4 through late June. All images are for sale in the store and online here.

This is how Brennan described Geri’s images and talent:  

Geri Gould was an artist who happened to use a camera. Like Claude Monet and so many other painters, Geri was on a continuous and relentless search for the light, and in the process, she discovered the shadows, thus starting a visual dialogue of elegance, intrigue, mystery, and poetry.

The light streams in through the window, is interrupted by the leg and side of the gate leg table. The shadow is cast on the wall as a silhouette. The artist chooses what to save and composes by distilling the visual elements of shape, line, texture, and value into powerful, simplified abstractions, not unlike Robert Motherwell’s paintings, inspired by the shadows cast by the “El” upon the Manhattan streets below.

Engaging in some kind of alchemy, Geri makes shapes dissolve into mystical visions, works of ambiguity, mystery, and beauty wherein the viewer is treated to a most sophisticated visual, mental, and emotional journey in which the artist simply but not simply, shows us what she found in the most common everyday occurrence of the sun shining through the window.

The interplay of the light and the dark has been the “stuff” of painters, poets, musicians, philosophers, and all variations of mankind since the first questions posed regarding the night and the day. As there can be no music without silence between the notes, there can be no elegant shadows unless the light is also present.

Geri Gould’s gift to us is in a plain, but not so plain symphony of shadow and light, composed over time in the finest tradition of art making, the passionate search to find beauty and meaning in the often missed light that may cast itself even across our bathroom wall.

Please join us for an opening reception to celebrate the art and life of Geri Gould at Greiser’s on Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 6:30 PM.

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Local Wisdom: After-Hours Gatherings at Greiser’s

APRIL 19: DISCOVER THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF EARLY EASTON WITH FRANK PAGLIARO

Running a small-town coffeeshop, we’re exposed every day to fascinating folks in our community.

An Olympic luger, a nonfiction-thriller writer, the creator of a leading clean-beauty makeup brand, a Barolo-trained prodigy chef, a designer of couture wedding gowns, a Broadway producer, a former big city Mayor, a painter of artwork collected by Beyoncé — they’re all among our Greiser’s regulars.

Easton  is a hive of accomplished people with unique talents. And if you frequent our shop, there’s a chance you’ve enjoyed a conversation with one of them on your visits here.

Ever since our November 1, 2018, opening day, we’ve aspired to provide a place for all the interesting and interested people in our community to connect. Lately, we’ve been thinking about how to do that in more deliberate ways.

So, we’re excited to launch Local Wisdom, a new occasional after-hours event series at Greiser’s. On these evenings, we’ll provide small bites, beverages (non-alcoholic, but byob is permitted), and a relaxed forum where you can get to know your neighbors, including some of Easton’s most creative and innovative residents. Each event will include a short “lecture” — think TEDTalk or PechaKucha presentation — and plenty of time for conversation with our featured guests — all of whom will be plucked right from our customer list.   

Join us for the third event in our series, “Discover the Hidden History of Early Easton” with Frank Pagliaro!

Frank Pagliaro

Local historian (and Greiser’s barista) Frank Pagliaro will join us from 6:30 – 8:00 pm on Wednesday, April 19, to present his own fascinating research and entertaining stories about the olden days of our lovely little town.

If you were dropped off in Easton 150 years ago, what would you recognize? In the 1870s you’d find several general stores, one-room schoolhouses, shoe shops, sawmills, grist mills, tanneries, blacksmiths, taverns, and hundreds of acres of fertile farmland crisscrossed by stone walls.

Today, our town hosts just a handful of commercial enterprises and 28 square miles of woodlands, reservoirs, farms, and more than two thousand homes on one- and three-acre lots.

Where did the past go? Frank quotes William Faulkner — “The past is never dead. It’s not even past”– and he says the history of Easton is all around you if you know where to look.

In this month’s Local Wisdom lecture, “Discover the Hidden History of Early Easton,” Frank will take us on a virtual walkabout of the Easton that was and, in some cases, still is.

What has changed, what has remained the same, and what is hiding in plain sight? What treasures are lying all around us, waiting for the curious to find? How does a walk in the woods become a tour of the past?

Join us this evening at Greiser’s to Discover the Hidden History of Early Easton with our in-house historian and morning barista, Frank Pagliaro.


A light buffet dinner and softdrinks will be served. BYOB welcome.

Space at Greiser’s is limited. Advanced registration is required. Tickets, $20, are available in-store or online here.

To learn about future events in our Local Wisdom series, please subscribe on our homepage to our email newsletter, the Flying A.

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Artist About Town: John Forgione’s Plein Air Paintings Return to Greiser’s

Opening Reception Thursday, February 9, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

The “old” Greiser’s, painted by John Forgione in 2018, two months before the “new” Greiser’s opened Nov. 1.

Easton is and has been home to many a famous artist.

Louise Bourgeois so loved her country home here that she sculpted a marble replica of it. Another globally known sculptor, Frederick Shrady, lived in Edna Ferber’s former estate on Maple Road. Naturalist painter and writer James Prosek developed an intense interest in fish as a child here and has since made a home in Easton with his own family. And now, NYC street artist Paul Richard rides around town on a vintage bicycle.

Yet part-time plein air painter John Forgione is arguably the most visible artist in Easton.

Weekdays, Forgione runs a digital marketing agency. But on weekends when the weather cooperates, he is a fixture of Easton’s open spaces. With his easel, oils, brushes, and canvas, you might find him in the orchard at Trout Brook Valley, amid the sunflowers on Adams Road, or capturing scenes at one of Easton’s bucolic farms; Gilbertie’s, Maple Row, Sabia’s, and Sport Hill Farm are among his beloved subjects. And he has been commissioned to capture on canvas several historic local homes.

Forgione also enjoys setting up his easel in other scenic Fairfield County spots, as well as on the water in Rhode Island, Barbados, Hawaii, and Positano. He’s even painted standing in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Easton painter John Forgione on the Brooklyn Bridge

But Easton is his home, and, contrary to the stereotype of the solitary, reclusive painter, Forgione is notably social. He and his wife Cara, parents of three JBHS grads, rarely miss an event at Greiser’s. They both participate in Easton Arts Council shows. And he’s been known to arrive at local parties and bars with his latest painting in tow for show and tell. He loves to talk about art and process.

On a recent Sunday afternoon at Greiser’s, Forgione engaged fellow painter Paul Richard in an animated conversation about canvas stretching techniques and employing the golden ratio in landscape painting. Richard said he thought he recognized Forgione from an Instagram post that pictured a painter on the street in NYC. Indeed, Forgione had attracted attention from passersby in October when he painted a scene at the corner of 21st Street and 9th Avenue in Chelsea.

On the day he bumped into Richard, Forgione was at Greiser’s to take some measurements. He’s getting ready to install a new exhibit here in February. It’s been nearly four years since he hung his paintings on the walls of the “new” Greiser’s, during our first year in business.

Back then, when space was even more limited than it is today, he hung his art on a wall in the kitchen — our “Galley Gallery” — and we invited guests to squeeze past the chest freezer and hand sink to view it. This time, we’re thrilled to be able to offer him professional hooks on art moulding in our dining room.

Come see how much we and the artist have grown over the years!

Opening reception Thursday, February 9, 2023, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm, with musical entertainment by Mike Miles. Free admission. All artwork will be for sale. Overflow parking will be available across the intersection at the Congregational Church.