The Workshop Gallery in Building 3:

The gallery is closed at the moment for repairs, but will re-open on April 26, 2024 from 4-7 pm with the opening reception for: The Garden: An Immersive Floral Experience by Sylvia Nichols.

Due to the ephemeral nature of living floral sculptures, this exhibition will close on May 5, 2024.

The Garden: An Immersive Floral Experience

Opens April 26th from 4-7 pm, and runs until May 5th.

Gallery Hours are: Fridays (except opening day), Saturdays and Sundays from 12-4 pm, with additional hours on May 1 (12-9 pm) and May 2 (12-4 pm) for the Great Give.

The artistry of Sylvia Nichols AIFD, blossoms into life at this captivating gallery event.  Merging the vibrant hues, familiar fragrances, and the exuberant spirit of spring’s flora with the raw, industrial backdrop of Ball and Socket Arts, this exhibition symbolizes the dynamic evolution of the gallery space. As visitors stroll through this burgeoning garden, they encounter a celebration of artistic expression in its myriad forms. Each piece, meticulously designed by the artist, communicates directly to the viewer, evoking the essence of spring—a time of hope, rejuvenation, and boundless possibilities. The floral narratives resonate, stirring the senses, and unfurling an ever-evolving canvas that reflects life’s delicate balance and the relentless courage to flourish anew.

Related Events:

Lessons of Flowers on May 1 from 6-7 pm on-site!

Be part of the fun! Join Sylvia as she shares the stories of flowers. Guests will choose the subject, Sylvia will create the design to tell the story. Learn tip and tricks and lots of flower facts. Free to attend. Limited seating available.

 About the Artist:

Meet Sylvia Nichols, AIFD PFCI, A floral industry leader whose career blossomed over 50 years, yet she jests that not a single flower was sold. Instead, she cultivated joy and comfort, acting as a “quasi therapist,” her blooms whispering the unspoken words of her clients’ hearts.

A national, award-winning entrepreneur, Sylvia’s shop was more than a business; it was a sanctuary where buds and blossoms were her language of empathy and care. Her reputation grew, much like her flowers, leading her to become a national floral educator and designer, imparting wisdoms of life through the lessons of flowers to professional florists across the United States.

Now a widow, Sylvia has seen the seasons change. Life, like her garden has been filled with the love of a blended family: 4 children, their partners, and a vibrant bouquet of 11 grandchildren, and a menagerie of dogs, cats, turtles, lizards and an occasional frog or tadpole —a testament to her nurturing spirit.

Her roots in the community run deep. After serving six terms as an elected official, Sylvia’s hung up her political hat, but not her pen. In collaboration with the keen-eyed Cheshire photographer Angela Pontecorvo, their debut book, “Tulips Talk…are you listening?” was released her in November, 2023, a title that beckons readers to find the messages hidden in nature’s beauty.

Keep your eyes peeled for their next literary seedling, set to sprout in late summer 2024: “My Best Friends Wear Feathers—and some sing!” It promises to be a chirpy tale, fluffing the nest of our hearts with stories of feathered friends and the songs they share with us.

Sylvia Nichols: a florist, a friend, a storyteller, sharing the lessons of life, as told through the voices of blossoms.  She may have never sold a flower, but oh, the stories she can tell…

Website  www.Lessonsofflowers.com.        Facebook: Lessons of flowers.com             Blog: Grow Your Spirit

Previous Exhibitions at Ball & Socket Arts:

Places We've Been featuring the sculptures of Susan Clinard

Opens March 1, 2024 with a reception from 4-7 pm. Exhibition continues until April 7, 2024. Gallery hours are Friday to Sunday from 12- 4pm. The Workshop Gallery will be closed on Easter Sunday (3/31).

"Art should reflect the times in which we live", a motto the great Nina Simone professed decades ago. Multimedia sculptor, Susan Clinard, has embodied this throughout her 30 year career. Her work takes on themes of our shared humanity with a poetic, compassionate voice. Discover how Clinard uses clay, wood, paint, paper, and found objects to share stories that are both current and timeless.

About the Artist:

Susan Clinard is a contemporary American sculptor. Her life-scale figurative sculptures combine found objects, carved wood elements and fired ceramic heads and hands. Her compositions tell stories, helps us connect and speak about our shared humanity. Clinard’s work reflects the times in which we live.

Susan’s sculptures were recently acquired by the Fenix Museum in Amsterdam, a major new museum inspired by stories of global migration. She is the winner of the National Hammerschalg carving award and the Art by the Northeast award for sculpture. She has been the artist in residence at the Eli Whitney Museum for the past twelve years. Susan has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. She has received substantial public commissions, and her sculptures can be found in many private and public collections worldwide. https://www.clinard.org/

“There is something intense yet poetic in the sensibilities of Clinard’s art work.… There is a clear luminosity to her work that is contemporary, yet incredibly timeless.… Her aesthetic places you in an artistic territory that creates a dialogue, causing viewers to stop in their tracks.”
— ART PLATFORM NYC 

“In Susan’s work, we see a deep appreciation for human history, for the eloquence of human gesture, as well as for the felt experience of individual lives. And we feel an obvious and contagious joy in what wood and wire, found objects and images, can come to reveal through the work of her hands and shaping spirit. She succeeds in illuminating both the overwhelming and underlaying connectivity of our world” Yale Daily News

 “Clinard’s work shows both empathy and immense technical proficiency, as if we have stepped from mid-polar vortex New Haven into Paris’ Musée Bourdelle, the quirky atelier of a monumental sculptor. The pieces keep us coming back not just because they are timely, but also because they are good. Indeed, Clinard has asked us to stare something in the face, and make her a promise in return. That we’ll be better, so someone else’s tomorrow can be too.” Arts Council

Strange Histories by Ian Trask

on view from January 19 to February 25, 2024 on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 12-4 pm.

Free parking on-site. Enter via Willow Street to enjoy our new, expanded parking!

The Artist

Ian Trask is a sculptor and multimedia artist who transforms waste materials into objects and installations with new purpose and integrity. His immersive works often play with sophisticated patterns, lending unlikely materials exquisite beauty. At other times, he works on an intimate scale with puckish humor. Trask began his career in New York City, where he was a core member of the Invisible Dog Art Center and exhibited at the Spring Break Art Fair, the Figment Festival, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Upon returning to Maine, where he studied biology at Bowdoin College, Trask has exhibited at the University of New England, University of Maine, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. In 2018, he published his first artist book, Strange Histories: A Bizarre Collaboration, and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Portland Press Herald, and Maine Magazine. https://www.iantrask.com/

Selected Images from Strange Histories

Signed, Stamped, Delivered features the art of: Josette Arana, Doris Bens, Alan Bisbort, Sara Blacklock, Shirley Brady, Farist Butler, Diane Calabro, S. Schapua Caplan, Carter, Deborah H.  Carter, Forest Carter, Charlotte Chapman, Clara Chapman, Peter  Chapman, Maryellen Considine-Woolley, Carol Constantino, Dave Coon, Susan  Corica, Alison V.  Cummings, Robbie DePosa, Mary  Dwyer, Sheryl Eisner, Cynthia Fazekas, Sharon Foster, Elizabeth Fox, Kathryn  Frund, Marian Gansley, Lisa Garvin, Craig Gilbert, Arielle, Charlotte and Steve Gionfriddo, John Grabar, Claudia Hearn, Tom Hearn, Ann Marie  Hearn,  James Honer,  Kieran Hyland, Hanae Ko, Robin Wilson  Kohnke, Lisa Krasnow, Marcy LaBella, Tony Lacy, John Lawler, Mary Maglio Lawler, Kristen Lengyel, Bob Lewis, Rhyer M., Cara Malavolti, Laura Copela Maturo, Olivia Maturo, Kyle McKernan, Madeline Miller, Andrew Morse, Ella N., Sarah Nankin, Zannah Noe, Claudia O'Connell, Cathy O'Keefe, Rafael Osés, Jeff Ostergren, Penelope  Pilarczyk,  Richard Pilarczyk,  Ellen Pliskin, Karen  Ponzio, Beau Prestia, Parker Prestia, Rossella Pellegrino Pulit, Rosemary Purdy, Joel Renker, Margaret Roleke, Faith Satterfield, Joan Shackford, Victoria Sivigny, Slezak, Csilla Somogyi,  Ilona Somogyi,  Rachel Spalding, Holly-Ann  Stowe, Elizabeth Titus, Deanna Todd, Andrew A Tranquilli, Pat Van Horn, Zoey Walte, Kim Wantroba, Jack Watton, Ernst Weber, Kris Wetmore, Owen Whatton, Maya Whinfield, Agnes Wnuk,  Toni Anne Wolfe, Nora Yeremina, Arne Youngberg, Adeline,  Corrine,  Dustin,  Nora, Nova,  Plain Jane 

The Workshop Gallery in Building 3 provides a home for exciting, contemporary visual arts exhibitions. The new space opened to the public in October 2023.