Derby lets the good times roll

George and Nancy Donskoj are among the small core of artists who moved to Kingston”™s waterfront Rondout district 20 years ago when it was a forgotten urban wasteland and built it into a vibrant arts community.
They opened one of the area”™s first galleries, Donskoj & Co., which has showcased the region”™s top artists. George, a stained-glass artisan whose clients have included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is also chairman of the city”™s Historic Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Nancy, a photographer who runs a business photographing artists”™ artworks, is an active member of the Rondout Business Association. Several of her black-and-white photographs, featuring dreamy, otherworldly images of urban subjects and stark Irish landscapes, achieved by using a soft-focus plastic camera, are currently on exhibit at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University at New York at New Paltz.
The Donskojs have accomplished much, both from a civic standpoint and as artists, but perhaps they are best known for an event in August in which artists, kids and even mayors crawl into handmade soapbox racers and zoom down lower Broadway to the applause of thousands.
George got the idea for the Artists”™ Soapbox Derby, as it is called, more than a decade ago, when he remembered the blast he had as a kid riding in soapbox derbies and wanted to create the opportunity to do it again. He mentioned his idea to the late Mayor T.R. Gallo one day in a local restaurant. “Gallo kept pestering us,” recalled George one recent afternoon in his studio, a cavernous  space that originally housed the D&H Canal”™s mule and tack supply shop. The numerous fascinating artifacts tucked away in various nooks reflect George”™s many interests and include several vintage British motorcycles.
The first Artists”™ Soapbox Derby was held in 1995 and featured eight entrants, including  Mayor Gallo, who had the city engineer build him a box on wheels. A section of Broadway was closed off and about 300 spectators showed up. There was $200 in prizes.
Eleven years later, in 2006, the event had grown to 38 entries, $2,600 in prize money and  approximately 7,500 spectators. Forty volunteers in red T-shirts provided crowd control. Stiltwalkers proceeded down the hill first, and after all the vehicles were safely at the bottom of Broadway the crowd drifted down to the waterfront to hear live bands and attend the awards ceremony. The racers included a futuristic-looking car with huge chrome fins, a steam-puffing locomotive and a fantasm of stalactite forms in rainbow colors that alluded to the abstract paintings of Kandinsky.
Along with prizes in two categories, kids and adults, there was also a people”™s choice award and the “Rondout Reject Reward,” a trophy of a horse”™s backside. A lucky spectator, whose name was pulled from a hat, won a new bicycle. At this year”™s event, scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 19, a bicycle also will be given away. It is currently displayed in the store window of George”™s studio and was donated by Markertek, a company based in Saugerties.
Pulling off the derby is no mean feat. The total cost is approximately $10,000, including the catchy poster, mailing of 500 postcards, the T-shirts, insurance coverage, and prize money. Each year George pays a different artist to design the poster. Then there”™s the sweat equity provided by Nancy, George and other volunteers. Much time and effort is spent in raising money. Local sponsors include Rondout Savings Bank, Central Hudson, Herzog”™s, Time Warner Cable, the Mid-Hudson Federal Credit Union and Bluebyrds, a store in uptown Kingston selling hats and blues music. A $600 grant was obtained from the Dutchess County Arts Council. Free ads run in Chronogram, and Ulster Publishing prints 25,000 copies of the event newsletter. Local radio station WKZE provides free advertising, as well. 
To encourage school groups and organizations such as the YMCA to participate, awards also are distributed in a youth group category.
While some participants spend months constructing what are, in essence, artworks on wheels, others throw something together at the last minute. That”™s fine, said Nancy. In fact, one of her favorites in last year”™s event was extremely simple: A plywood platform rolling over wooden dowels, which had to be continually positioned in front of the platform by a crew running down the hill. 
She noted that city worker Alan Adin has contributed many of the cleverest derby racers over the years, including a giant head of Mayor Gallo called “Gallo”™s Humor”; an enormous hairball (collected from a beauty salon over the course of a year) set on a platform next to a tiny cat; and a racing live lobster wearing half a lemon as a helmet.
For sure, the Artists”™ Soapbox Derby succeeds in taking art off its pedestal and lets grown-ups be kids for a day.