KENT — Peter D’Aprile is not the average pharmacy owner. He is a registered pharmacist who also earned an MBA. His professional health and business school backgrounds work together to take the Kent pharmacy scene in new directions.D’Aprile purchased the Kent Apothecary in November 2008. In 2009 he purchased Custom Compounding, a specialty pharmacy located in the same building, but operated as a separate business. Custom compounding allows the pharmacist to make “drugs that are not commercially available, using raw ingredients,” D’Aprile explained. “We also have the ability to make medicines in different dosages than commonly available. “And we prepare different forms. For example we can take almost any raw ingredient and prepare it as a solution, suppository, cream, capsule, et cetera.”A large part of Custom Compounding’s business, he said, “is biomedical hormone replacement therapy, known as BHRT. We prepare medicine for animals for veterinary patients including cats, dogs, birds, geese and rabbits.”Custom Compounding also makes capsules without inactive ingredients for patients with allergies. They have “veggie caps,” which are made without any animal products for patients with personal preferences or allergies. They can also take a traditional product and flavor it.D’Aprile said there are very few compounding pharmacies in the state. Custom Compounding belongs to a national trade organization located in Texas, Professional Compounding Centers of America. With little competition this unique pharmacy has clients all over Connecticut as well as in Massachusetts and New York.The Apothecary has evolved since D’Aprile purchased it in 2008. “We’ve added a lot of merchandise to the front of the store,” he said. “There are a lot of different lines, a variety of new merchandise.“It’s a place people can go. We have the everyday stuff, the over-the-counter medications, unique gifts. We have some greeting cards you won’t find anywhere else. We have locally made things, like tote bags custom painted by a Kent couple. We have postcards from local photographers. We try to offer as many local products as possible.” Most important, though, is having the pharmacist there all the time, getting to know the customers and responding quickly to their needs.“We’ve raised the level of customer service,” he said.The pharmacist brought up something he is passionate about. “Most consumers do not realize the price they pay for prescriptions is the same at their local pharmacy as at a large chain store. Their co-pays are exactly the same. We also offer a $5 per month generic prescription program like many of the chains.”Kent Apothecary is affiliated with Health Mart, which helps this friendly small-town shop to compete with the large chain stores, not only in prices for prescriptions but also for over-the-counter medications. Health Mart is “a very loose franchise model with almost 3,000 independent pharmacy members,” D’Aprile explained. D’Aprile is looking ahead to the future. He opened a new pharmacy, The English Apothecary in Bethel, Conn., last month.The Kent Apothecary is located on the northeast corner of routes 7 and 341. The phone number is 860-927-3725.
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Artist Victor Cella with his recent painting “White Dog” in his studio and shop, Little Store Antiques in Great Barrington.
L. Tomaino
Cella greets visitors while talking with a fellow painter who comments about his work and Cella himself: “Eclectic, amazing! Victor is decidedly loved in the community and exhibits to everyone his completely open heart.” She added, “He inspires the rest of us who paint.”
Cella began devoting himself to painting about four and a half years ago. He remembers taking art classes in high school. He had finished all his credits early and was allowed, in his senior year, to take art for four hours a day. He credits his art teacher, Mr. Owen, with giving him a good foundation in art.
“Now that I paint, I rely on my teacher’s words: ‘To unify a painting, pick a color and wash it over the painting,’ or, ‘You need to mix the colors!’”
He won a scholarship to New York University to study art, but his parents said no.Instead, he attended North Adams State College, where he also took an art class at Williams College, repeating a pattern from high school in which he finished his required credits early and used the extra time to study art.
He earned a teaching degree in special education and ended up working in schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut for 37 years. He retired in 2019.
Then, four and a half years ago, he got the urge to paint, and the paintings flowed out of him.
He has sold 757 paintings, with 95 of those sold since May 7. “I am having bizarrely good luck with my paintings.” He estimates he has painted 2,000 paintings in four and a half years.
He modestly attributes his success to “I sell low and I have a built-in client base of 51 years,” he said, referring to recurring customers in his antique shop. “A billion people give me feedback.” He has two patrons who each have several of his paintings. “Unbelievably,” says Cella, “one person owns 32 and the other owns 27.”
His studio is in the back of the shop. He paints now on 16-by-20-inch canvases, some of which he recycles, finding them at Goodwill.
Cella’s paintings are tucked in almost every available space thoughout Little Store Antiques. L. Tomaino
To keep his painting fresh and himself interested because, as Cella explained, “I can’t stay with one idea for long,” he has gone through several phases: crazy dogs, grids, flowers with black backgrounds, a geometric phase and “weird people.” The “crazy dogs,” as he calls them, are popular now. One person bought eight, left to go to her car and came back for a ninth, spotted in the shop’s window — the one that brought her into the shop in the first place.
He may even illustrate a children’s book with the “crazy dogs.” A local author liked them so much she asked Cella if he’d illustrate a story about three dogs if she wrote one.
Cella was also approached recently by a person who said, “Do you know you were my favorite teacher?” She came into The Little Store, attracted by the paintings in the shop’s window. It turned out the former student owns Crystal Essence on Railroad Street in Great Barrington and has asked to sell Cella’s paintings there.
Cella, who will soon be selling the building where The Little Store is located and move it nearer to his Southfield home, was glad to be offered a new venue for his paintings.
An artist he knows, Scott Prior, a painter from Nantucket, bought one of Cella’s paintings and gave him this advice: “Never go to art school. You are an artist. Let it pour out of you.”
Cella said, “You have to follow your own path.” He mused, “If I taught art, I’d teach it in a different way. I could teach it as an awareness — how to free yourself up.”
To see more of Cella’s work, visit The Little Store (88 Main St.) or Crystal Essence (39 Railroad St.) in Great Barrington.
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