10 Years of Five Points

At the end of the summer of 2012 the Arts and Culture Commission for the city of Torrington, Conn., announced that the pop-up gallery that had gone up in a vacant downtown retail building would become a permanent fixture. The success of the Art Space Torrington initiative led to rent-control support from the Torrington Downtown Partners, and after winter renovations, Five Points Gallery was unveiled in Feb. 2013. As a nonprofit gallery, the new Five Points — named after the five-way crossing near the Naugatuck River — was able to collect donations as well as gallery commissions from works sold. In 2016, The Five Points Launchpad opened its doors as a collaboration with Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, offering shared affordable studio space for recent fine arts graduates as they build their post-college careers. A second gallery space — Five Points Annex on Water Street — operates as a revolving pop-up gallery for the Launchpad artists.

In the summer of 2020, despite the pandemic, Five Points made its biggest leap yet when it acquired the former University of Connecticut, Torrington campus. With $2.7 million in funding from the state Department of Community and Economic Development, the Five Points Center for the Visual Arts now includes gallery spaces, painting classrooms, and a printmaking studio. Artists can schedule studio time while workshops are also made available for the public.

In only a decade Five Points has transformed from an experiment in a vacant building to a key component in both the revitalization of Torrington’s downtown area and as a necessary resource for emerging talent in a city not previously known for robust — or any — arts funding. For young residents of Litchfield County, pockets of affordable rental properties in Torrington make the city a livable alternative compared to the inflated real estate market of the more expensive, rural towns. The galleries and the newly renovated Five Points Center provide resources for working artists, but they also act as cultural institutions, reshaping what is possible in a small urban area without an established contemporary art museum. While the majority of the art world caters to the rich who are able to buy art as investment, small galleries — especially those outside the blue chip level of profit — can act as spaces for public viewing and engagement with contemporary works.

Walking through the original Five Points Gallery, one of its most notable features is the large windows, where the flurry of activity on the sidewalks, the multi-lane traffic, and the noise of the city seep into the space. It’s not the still, sensory-calming retreat one might expect from a gallery — but the glass has two sides. Out on the street, Five Points illuminates its darkened downtown corner, the large-scale abstract pieces are highly visible, and the art becomes a texture of the neighborhood.

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