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September 12 – October 25, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, September 12, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
In-person Artist Talk: Friday, October 10, 6:30 PM
Goblins Will Get You Series
The title of this charcoal drawing series is taken from a line in the children’s poem “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley. In the poem the narrator states that if a child refuses to be helpful and respectful that sometime when they least expect it the goblins will come and take them away for being selfish and naughty. My brothers and I would beg my mom to read this to us always around Halloween. It scared us every time.
For this drawing series I started with a vintage family photo of four siblings posing together on Easter Sunday of 1943 as a subject and point of departure. To start I based the general composition on these four children and then working in charcoal by layering, mark-making, and erasure I altered their appearances into something other than simple happy family members.
I was seeking to make a drawing of not how they currently appear in their photo but rather what they will become in the future when one of them will grow up to cause pain and trauma to a child the very age they are in the photo – a goblin in real life.
PATRICIA CARRIGAN / Artist Biography 2025
Patricia Carrigan is a painter and mixed media artist from East Granby, CT. Patricia has exhibited
her paintings, drawings, and mixed media pieces since 1990 in several solo, group, national and
international exhibitions. Her work is represented in many private and public collections.
Patricia received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Connecticut at Storrs in
1994 in paining and drawing and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hartwick College in Oneonta,
New York in 1982 in painting and art education. Themes explored in her work include memory
and personal storytelling, Irish family histories and everyday symbols.
Patricia has been awarded numerous grants including a Fellowship at the Vermont Studio
Center in Johnson, Vermont and two Studio Grants from The Greater Hartford Arts Council. She
is a 1999, 2002 and 2004 recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from The
Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and a Ballinglen Artist Residency Fellowship in
Ballycastle, County Mayo, Ireland in 2005 and 2007. In 2022 Patricia retired from teaching after
twenty-five years as a professor of visual fine arts at Manchester Community College in
Manchester, Connecticut enabling her to return to a full-time studio practice and devote more
time to community arts programming. She is currently a member of Silvermine Artist Guild,
The Art League of New Britain, The West Hartford Art League, The Washington Art Association,
The Canton Artists’ Guild, The Greenwich Art Society. The Windsor Art Center, The Connecticut
Academy of Fine Arts, and The Carriage Barn Arts
In her new painting and works on paper series, Family Ghosts, Sara Conklin explores the complexities of memory and the past. Working from old photos and layering over existing paintings, Conklin creates a transparent multidimensional effect that reflects the influence of nostalgia and truth on our personal histories. The works on paper in this series challenge the viewer to question what we can truly trust in our memories and investigate the ways in which our recollections of the past are impacted by emotion, time and experience. Through this exhibit she invites viewers to reflect on their own memories and the ghosts that may linger in their own history.
Sara Conklin Bio
Born in CT, Sara lived in New York City the past 35 years but has recently returned to her roots in Northwest Connecticut. Conklin works as an sales account manager for a technology company to support her art passion. When she isn’t working 9 to 5 Conklin enjoys plein air painting in the beautiful Litchfield country or working in her studio in Torrington CT on various projects. Conklin received her Bachelor of Arts from Springfield College and attended Banff Center of the Arts in Alberta Canada and The Arts Student League in New York City. She was a member of the Ceres Gallery in New York from 2008- 2018 and a member of the Silvermine Art Center. Among the venues Conklin has exhibited are Five Points Gallery in Torrington CT, Ridgefield Guild of Artists, Ridgefield CT, Broome Street Gallery, New York, NY, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, Narrowsburg, NY, Long Island Museum as well as exhibited locally and nationally in galleries and museum exhibits.
Sewn paper and mixed media sculpture have been my choice of media for over twenty years. Born of second-generation immigrants, whose Great Depression survival skills shaped my religious reuse and reverence for the decayed and discarded, I’ve been driven to make and to remake objects.
After many years of sewing and constructing forms of cotton rag paper, I have recently discovered the fresh new medium of wax paper. Despite the technical challenges that this household paper presents due to its fragile, brittle and mostly unyielding nature, I continue to be drawn to this unremarkable paper’s remarkably poetic qualities.
Although my artistic process remains mostly intuitive, the resulting forms are often steeped in reoccurring themes centering on the rigors and rituals of human relationships– especially those entrenched in the depths of love and loss. While many of my works emanate from a deeply personal and autobiographical place, they are meant to inspire reflection and interpretation filtered by the viewer’s personal experience. Certainly, wax paper’s inherent fragility, transparency, as well as, its ethereal and even disposable constitution contributes to that end.
In my work, I explore themes of loss, remembrance, and regeneration. I believe, as individuals, we are living histories with the ability to empathize with those who have experienced loss and trauma. By acknowledging personal and collective trauma we allow humanity to create conditions for working through layers of wounds and unlocking pain that has been in our systems, societies, and earth for centuries. Through my practice I bring to light memories of events from our past into our present. I am not telling or retelling any stories, I am solely remembering individuals and places that history may have forgotten.
In my current series, “Steps to a seismic collapse”, I make a series of gelatin prints of thread on a variety of different papers. Once the gelatin prints are finished, I edit through the pieces and begin to hang the individual pieces with straight pins and magnets on a wall to create an installation. This work is a homage to my mother that passed away and to the mother daughter relationship we shared together.
Artist Biography:
Linda C. Smith is a visual artist and educator based in New York City. Experimentation with materiality is a large component of Smith’s artistic practice and approach to teaching. Her work as an educator is heavily influenced through her time teaching photography to survivors and former perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where she lived for five years. This experience heavily influenced her work and led her to explore themes of loss and regeneration. Smith’s work has been exhibited in the United Nations headquarters in New York City, as well as the United States and Rwandan Embassies. She earned a BA from Syracuse University and her MFA from the University of Connecticut.
