Denny Dillon’s Stone Ridge home has many things in common with other historic Hudson Valley houses: wide pine floors, wavy glass windows, heavy planked doors. But it also contains one unique feature—The Drawing Room, a gallery filled with interesting and eclectic art. The gallery sign features Buddy, her Boston Terrier mascot/muse painted on it in black and white. But to give a more accurate representation of the art in this space, the sign should include some shade of green.

Currently, Dillon is better known for other artistic pursuits; she’s enjoyed a long, successful career as an actress, specializing in comedic roles on stage and screens large and small. She’s had some great gigs, like a coveted cast member slot in the 1980-81 season of “Saturday Night Live,” and a role as one of John Travolta’s dance club acolytes in Saturday Night Fever. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her work in Broadway’s “My One and Only,” and won a Cable Ace Award for playing Toby Pedalbee in the HBO series “Dream On.” Other highlights on her long list of credits include playing Rosanne Barr in a TV biopic, voicing a Glyptodon and various other creatures in the animated Ice Age features, and portraying a passenger on doomed flight United 93.

The daughter of an actress/acting teacher, Dillon was born in Cleveland. She spent 25 years living in New York, eight in Los Angeles, and moved to Ulster County six years ago. She rented at first and imagined buying a farmhouse in the country, but the house she ended up with is right in the center of the town. “When I pulled up with the real estate lady, I didn’t at first want to go in the house,” Dillon says, “but then I did, and was just knocked out. I used to live on 9th Avenue so I don’t mind the energy of a little town. People stop by and have coffee, and I love that too. We’re Denny’s, we never close.”

She calls her house “minimalist” in style, but the well-chosen furnishings inside offer maximum atmosphere. She favors interesting antique pieces, and has refinished many of them herself. A few were outright salvaged, like a dump-rescued dresser in the upstairs hallway that shows layers of blue and green paint. It’s a gracefully aged look that Dillon and her random orbital sander are entirely responsible for. Her method is simple: “I sand through paint layers, I paint it, then sand it again. I sometimes spend all day doing nothing but this. I get a little obsessive.”

Her visual art is also a result of her knack for turning castaways into incredible creations. Along with her lively pen and ink sketches, Dillon’s repurposed “art in the box” assemblages frequently adorn the walls of her front-room gallery. They are small, charmingly intimate dioramas created from tiny yard and barn sale findings that she arranges in unique containers. “This is,” Dillon says, “a real example of recycling; I use antique postcards, old gears and keys, found objects, and antique boxes. Since I started doing this, people have been bringing me boxes and little tiny things. It’s wonderful.”

Circuses appear frequently, as well as gears, timepieces, and dice. “I love all these little things. They’re like little stages,” she says, “and I think they have some acting aspect that has moved into my art.”

There’s also drama in these boxes, like one pretty, ornate pair hanging side by side. “There were these two little dolls at the sale, and I thought everyone would want the doll with the pink ribbon but no one would want the one with no arms, so I had to buy her. I call them, ‘Good Doll,’ ‘Bad Doll.’”

Dillon had no formal training in art, but says she always drew. “It’s amazing what the Hudson Valley pulls out of you,” she says. “I think it’s a creative vortex up here, I really do. Even with the furniture, I had no idea I could do that.”

Though much of Dillon’s art and antiquing fall into the sustainable/green category, she doesn’t think she’s very “good at that stuff, though I’m getting better—I try to wash in the evenings, use the right light bulbs, do the things Al Gore said in An Inconvenient Truth.” Her least green indulgence is, she says, eating candy. “I don’t think that would make it onto anyone’s green list!” she laughs.

Dillon’s art has shown in several galleries and is in the collection of folks like actresses Lily Tomlin and Mary Louise Wilson, and sculptor Gillian Jagger. She still takes acting and voice-over roles, heads an improv comedy group called ImprovNation at Actors and Writers in Olivebridge, and teaches improv in local schools. She feels a sense of excitement about the most recent turns her creativity has taken. “(The same time) my work was in a show in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, I went to a barn sale and found all these antique postcards of St. Thomas. I thought, well, I’m in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing.”

The Drawing Room will reopen for spring on April 25 with a show of artist Chris Hawkins’ eclectic paintings. See drawingroom.com for more information.