About
A forklift factory.
A century of American art.
One artist’s vision.
Lift Trucks Art is an independent studio and exhibition space in Croton Falls, New York, fifty miles north of Manhattan in a building that has stood on Route 22 since 1922. No corporate board. No art fair markup. Just paintings, sculpture, and a hundred years of interesting history.
The Building
Built in 1922.
A feed store, a forklift factory,
now this.
The building at 3 East Cross Street opened in 1922 as a feed, grain, and hardware store when Route 22 was still a farm road running through northern Westchester County. During the Great Depression it briefly housed a John Deere tractor outlet. Then, in the 1940s, B. Hawley Smith transformed it into a forklift sales and repair operation. The business would go on to occupy the building for over seventy-five years, with seventeen employees punching in on a time clock that still works upstairs. The cement-block, poured-concrete floor and massive I-beam structure supported more than seventy-five forklifts at eight thousand pounds each. Smith was also an inventor. He held a patent for a gun system to shoot rope from Navy vessels docking at port, and installed a propeller on the roof to harness wind power, ganging up rows of nickel-plated Thomas Edison batteries to keep the lights on when Croton Falls was one of the last towns in Westchester with its own unreliable power company.
In time, the forklift business collapsed. The building sat vine-covered and nearly abandoned. Then a few artists, being driven out of just about everywhere else, landed here. In 2009, Tom Christopher opened the doors to the public with an inaugural exhibition called From a Factory Floor — a collaboration between master printmaker Gary Lichtenstein and fourteen artists, including Alex Katz, Gary Panter, and Ken Price. The New York Times sent photographer Librado Romero. The rest followed.
“The red enamel ‘Lift Trucks’ lettering on the outside wall was left up because they were too lazy to think of a new name. And so began what we have today.”
The name stuck. So did the industrial character of the space. Original factory artifacts, foundry crucibles, castings, and hand tools, remain on permanent display alongside fine art in what the gallery calls its Arts and Industry collection. The time clock. The I-beams. The concrete floor scored by decades of forklift traffic. The building itself is the first exhibit.
3 East Cross Street, Croton Falls. The building has stood on Route 22 since 1922 — feed store, forklift factory, art space.
Built
1922
Founded
2009
Location
Rte 22
The Artist
From Disneyland sketches to the White House collection.
Tom Christopher was born in Hollywood, California in 1952 and grew up in the LA hot rod and skateboard culture. He studied at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and earned his BFA from Art Center College of Design in 1979, training under noted California painter Lorser Feitelson and legendary Disney animator Ward Kimball. To pay tuition, he drew portraits of tourists at Disneyland.
His first professional work was for CBS Records, where he earned a gold record for promotional posters. He shot the Las Vegas Grand Prix and the Mille Miglia with photographer Bill Claxton for Motor Trend. Then, in 1981, he moved to New York and got a job as a courtroom sketch artist for CBS News, covering the trial of Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon, and the trial of Jean Harris.
By the mid-1980s, Christopher had transitioned to fine art. His expressionist paintings of New York City – cabbies, bike messengers, fire hydrants, Times Square at midnight became his signature. He paints with small-batch, handmade acrylic, leaving pencil lines from the initial sketch visible on the white canvas. It is raw, physical, fast work.
“Monet had his water lilies and Tom Christopher has Times Square.”
The New Yorker
His work hangs in the White House. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Rupert Murdoch, and the Fondation Colas in Paris are collectors. He has shown at MoMA, the Asia Society, the New-York Historical Society, the Butler Institute of American Art, and the Museum of the City of New York. He is represented by galleries in Tokyo, Paris, Osaka, Frankfurt, and Dusseldorf. His studio at Lift Trucks Art, which he calls The Showroom, is open to visitors – original paintings alongside the foundry objects and crucibles he has collected for decades.
1952
Born in Hollywood, California. Grew up in LA hot rod culture.
1979
BFA, Art Center College of Design. Studied under Lorser Feitelson and Ward Kimball.
1981
Moved to New York. Courtroom sketch artist for CBS News. Chapman trial. Harris trial.
1990
First NYC paintings shown at Saint Marks Gallery in the East Village.
1997
Roseland Ballroom mural. 30 feet tall, 230 feet long. West 53rd Street.
1998
MTA “Art in Transit” subway art series commission.
2004
New-York Historical Society installs Christopher’s chair, easel, and painting in the permanent collection.
2009
Opens Lift Trucks Project in Croton Falls. Inaugural show From a Factory Floor with Gary Lichtenstein.
2012
NYU Langone Medical Center mural. 10×30 feet. 85+ images across the hospital.
2014
Brill Building residency. Painted Times Square live from the windows at 49th & Broadway.
2016
Paseo Caribe, San Juan. 4,000 sq ft mural with students from Escuela de Artes Plásticas.
2017
Virtual Reality Fine Art program launched at Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx.
“
“He has bridged the gap between pure narrative painting and expressionist abstraction. He has become to American painting what Count Basie or Duke Ellington became to American popular music.”
Dr. Louis A. Zona, Director — Butler Institute of American Art
Where the Work Lives
Museums, institutions, and galleries worldwide.
Permanent collections, public installations, and current gallery representation.
Museum Collections & Installations
The White House
Washington, D.C.
New-York Historical Society
Permanent Collection
Museum of the City of New York
New York
MoMA
New York
Asia Society
New York
Butler Institute of American Art
Youngstown, OH
The Aldrich Museum
Ridgefield, CT
U.S. Department of State
Art in Embassies
Fondation Colas
Paris
NYU Langone Medical Center
85+ works installed
International Gallery Representation
Galerie Tamenaga
Tokyo · Osaka · Paris
Galerie Barbara von Stechow
Frankfurt
Galerie Vomel
Dusseldorf
J.N. Bartfield Gallery
New York
David Findlay Galleries
New York
Notable Private Collections
Rudolph Giuliani
Former Mayor, NYC
Rupert Murdoch
Laura Bush
Former First Lady
Beyond the Gallery
Art that goes somewhere.
Lift Trucks Art extends beyond the walls of a 1922 building on Route 22.
Medical · VR
Virtual Reality Fine Art at Montefiore
In 2017, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx commissioned Christopher to build immersive VR environments for pediatric cancer patients. Working with FIT’s Fine Art Media Lab and Google Tilt Brush, the team recreated Fordham Road and the New York Botanical Gardens as navigable virtual worlds. The program reduces anxiety, pain, and the need for opioids.
Collection · Archive
Classic American Tattoo Flash
The Lift Trucks collection of vintage tattoo flash art was curated by Pamela Hart. It included original work by Sailor Jerry, Brooklyn Joe Lieber, Paul Rogers, and over twenty-five other artists. The collection was featured in Tattooed New York at the New-York Historical Society in 2017, covered by The New Yorker, Smithsonian, the BBC, and TIME.
Public · Concept
The Drive-By Gallery
A rotating exhibition visible through the building’s street-facing windows to car traffic passing on Route 22. Part folk art, part provocation — a new and uniquely American form of viewing art. Artworks are rotated regularly and have included Depression-era shoeshine boxes, vintage flash, industrial artifacts, and contemporary painting. QR codes and a live video feed connect the physical to the digital.
Notable Projects
Walls, windows, subways, and airports.
Selected public and institutional commissions.
01
2014
The Brill Building Residency
Tom Christopher and Andy Hammerstein took up studio residence in the windows of the Brill Building at 49th and Broadway — the legendary home of Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, and Carole King. The building owner offered the space free of charge during renovations. They painted Times Square live, six hours a day, while pedestrians watched from the street below.
02
2012
NYU Langone Murals
A 10-by-30-foot mural anchors a collection of over eighty-five images installed across the medical center — reception areas, corridors, waiting rooms, staff offices, and a ten-foot circular ceiling painting designed to feel like a skylight over the city.
Permanent Installation
03
1997
Roseland Ballroom Mural
Thirty feet tall and two hundred thirty feet long. A monumental painting wrapping the exterior of the Roseland Ballroom on West 53rd Street — one of the largest public artworks in midtown Manhattan at the time.
West 53rd Street
04
2016
Paseo Caribe, San Juan
A four-thousand-square-foot mural created with students from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The murals are being transferred to the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport.
Puerto Rico
05
1998
MTA Subway Art
Commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the “Art in Transit” series, which places permanent artworks in New York City subway stations.
MTA Commission
06
2016
San Juan International Airport
Four thousand square feet of murals celebrating the working people of Puerto Rico — painted with students from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño in a public studio on Bahia Plaza. Now installed at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport.
El Nuevo DIA
The Philosophy
Work that holds up.
Lift Trucks Art operates independent of the traditional gallery system. There is no art fair overhead. No middleman markup. Just a direct connection between artist and collector, in a space with genuine architectural character. Not a white box. Not a converted warehouse. A building that earned every crack in its concrete.
The showroom is open Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Walk in, look at paintings, and talk to the person who made them. Monday through Thursday by appointment. No sales pressure. Fifty miles from Manhattan but a long way from Chelsea.
Come see the building.
Route 22, Croton Falls, New York. F–Sun 11a–5p. M–Thurs by appointment. Metro-North to Croton Falls station.