Destination: Art

“Artists make us understand our world in ways words alone cannot,” says Judith McElhone, founder and executive director of Five Points Center for the Visual Arts in Torrington, Connecticut. As an artist and educator who has spent her career creating opportunities in the visual arts, their power is something that McElhone understands better than most.

In 2013, she helped launch Torrington’s Five Points Gallery (so-named for its location at the five-point intersection at the heart of downtown) in an effort to revitalize the city and cultivate the region’s nascent art scene. The space, which began as a temporary artist showcase, is now a well-known gallery that has exhibited almost 800 artists from across the world.

Since the opening of the gallery, the Five Points nonprofit organization has continued to invest in Torrington as an arts destination, expanding its mission and services to include Five Points Annex, a second gallery space; the Launchpad, a shared studio and young artist mentorship space; and most recently, the Five Points Art Center, which officially opened in the city’s former University of Connecticut regional campus last fall.

“Artists, from the beginning of time, have needed encouragement and help to make their work and to grow as individuals,” says McElhone of the impetus to expand the nonprofit’s footprint to the 90-acre campus and its 30,000-square-foot building. Three-quarters of the multi-level building has been completely renovated into state-of-the-art lab space, with the grounds in development as a public sculpture park.

The goal is to create a facility where people of all ages can access equipment to explore and experiment in the visual arts. “Today, artists are going cross-discipline all the time,” says McElhone. As such, the center has created lab spaces for drawing, painting, printmaking, alternative photo processing, and children’s art, with ceramics, fine art textiles, and technology on the way.

In addition to renting access to the labs by the hour, half-day, or day, the center also offers workshops for artists of all ages and abilities, which run the gamut from figure drawing to tapestry to visible mending and salt print photograms. This summer, the center is also slated to offer workshops for teens ages 13 to 17 and native Spanish speakers.

The organization’s endeavors have officially put Torrington on the map as a hub of education, collaboration, and creativity in the arts, and the Five Points Arts Center is destined to become a vibrant educational facility designed for cutting-edge artistic exploration and community-driven arts activity. “Making art is a lifelong endeavor,” says McElhone. “Work will be made here we can't yet even imagine.”

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