Creative Impressions reopens in Midway Shopping Center

When Creative Impressions reopens June 1 in Midway Shopping Center, it will have the same phone number, the same website and the same blue-and-gold sign from the store’s downtown Rehoboth location. The difference will be who owns the business.

Former owner Scott Frohman retired and closed the iconic gallery in April after 35 years in business. A little more than a month later, James Jang, the business’ longtime framer, is reopening the gallery.

Jang, 63, said it’s exciting to be taking on the challenge of running the business as a whole.

“I’ve just been dealing with the framing side of things,” he said of his four decades of framing experience. “It’s exciting to be getting into the retail.”

Jang is from South Korea and studied at Rutgers University, receiving a master’s degree in political science before getting into the framing business. He said by the time he was ready to go back to South Korea, he was too old to find a job without having a doctorate. A friend told him about a print framing job in New Jersey, and he said, from there he never looked back. Eventually, Jang befriended Frohman, who offered Jang exclusive framing rights to his growing gallery empire, which at one point, in addition to downtown Rehoboth, grew to include galleries at the Tanger Outlets, Annapolis, Dover and two in Ocean City. Jang framed all those prints.

Jang said he moved to the Cape Region because it was quiet and a good place to raise kids. He and his wife and co-owner, Roseann, have a daughter and a son – both graduates of Cape Henlopen High School.

In addition to Jang, longtime employees Phil Gallelli and Susan Korwek are also returning.

This is just the next generation of Creative Impressions, said Korwek, recognizing that the company has gone through many changes in its decades of existence.

Korwek, who has worked at Creative Impressions for 25 years, said the gallery will continue to offer a wide selection of prints, but without the cramped feeling of before.

Gallelli said Jang can do any type of custom frame job – shadow boxes, multi-cut matting and a host of other framing specialty work.

Jang said soon there will be a workstation in the back of the gallery, which will allow him to assemble the frames onsite. He said it will have a dry-mounting machine, mat-cutting machine, and glass-cutting machine.

Jang said Creative Impressions is offering 3-day express framing. A customer can drop something off on Friday, and he said the picture will be ready by the time they leave on Sunday.

For more information on Creative Impressions, 18675 Coastal Highway, Suite 9, call 302-227-7171 or email creativeimpressionsart@gmail.com. Hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week.