‘Sisters Forever’: Sorelle Gallery Opens on Main Street

Two generations ago, Sandra Pelletier’s grandparents made their way from Italy to Fairfield County by way of Brooklyn—to the Huntington section of Shelton, specifically.

There, they purchased and worked a large dairy farm, and some years later, Pelletier’s father married into the family and built a small house on 70 acres next door.

“It was a small, five-room ranch but we had probably the richest life in the world because it was such a wonderful experience to grow up in that environment,” Pelletier recalled Friday from inside Sorelle Gallery, which opened three weeks ago at 84 Main St. “We felt we were like Tom Sawyer kids. We had great tree forts all over the place, so it was a creative and rich artistic environment. Most of it was our art that we made as kids.”

Early efforts from Pelletier, herself a painter who has sold her work, include watercolor that she did as a child—of her own black cat, Shadow, sitting in a basket and looking out “with the big eyes and so forth.”

“My mother really loved it, so she framed it,” Pelletier recalled. “In those days, we didn’t get custom frames. But she got a ready-made frame and put it in the frame and there it sat in the kitchen.”

Experiences like that helped to nurture what became a profound connection to art work for Pelletier—academic and otherwise (she studied art history at Southern Connecticut State University, then earn a master’s in art education from Skidmore College in 2008)—and resulted in her professional pursuit as a gallery owner.

The second year-round space that Pelletier owns (there’s another in Albany, N.Y. and an original in Saratoga Springs that’s now seasonal, 2,000-square-foot Sorelle Gallery—pronounced ‘So-RELL-ee,’ more on the name below—includes about 200 works of art (mostly paintings, some ceramics) and they’re almost exclusively from regional artists in the Northeast. Each work is brought in on consignment under a contract between Sorelle and the individual artist and the collection spans traditional, representational work to modern, abstract pieces.

“When people have a piece of art in their homes—it could be nostalgic, could remind them of something wonderful in the past, where they grew up, it could remind them of something their parents did, something wonderful—they can wake up every day and look at it and it’s just uplifting,” Pelletier said. “Things are tough in this world. It’s tough enough to just get through the day a lot of times, a lot of people have a tough time. To be able to look at a piece of art and be reminded of something special or just give them that boost—it’s a wonderful thing.”

Here’s a 5-slide gallery (article continues below) spotlighting some of the work at Sorelle, to pause the slide and get more information about a piece, just move your cursor over it. We include size and artist information on the painting, with some words about both from Pelletier herself:

[acx_slideshow name=”Sorelle Gallery May 2014″]

 

The gallery will hold its Grand Opening from 5 to 9 p.m. on Friday, June 6—a Brazil-themed affair (for native Rafaella LaRoche, assistant director at Sorelle) that includes hors d’oeuvres and caipirinhas (nice summer drink, made with cachaça).

Asked why she chose New Canaan, Pelletier said she liked this area and towns such as Greenwich and Westport, “but New Canaan is a very small, unique little town. It has Main Street and Elm Street and the shops are very unique, so it’s community-oriented. You do have J. Crew, you do have some of the major shops, but in between all of those you have all of these very unique, owner-based shops, which is rare.  It makes for a business that wants a more unique look and they want to do nice, special servicing for clients.”

So far, so good.

New Canaan resident Karen Feiner, who works downtown, has become a regular visitor (with her sweet 13-year-old German shepherd, Phoebe—more on her later this week) as well as a customer, purchasing three pieces already.

Feiner told NewCanaanite.com that she’s far from an art expert though she likes to have art work hanging at home and always has.

“I love it. I come in here every day. I think they’re getting sick of me,” Feiner said with an easy laugh.

“They don’t push anything on you. They show you every optimum way you can look at the art, take you around the gallery. They have a viewing room, will turn the lights off and on and they’re just very knowledgeable about the paintings, and make you see things you haven’t seen yourself, which is also very interesting.”

Feiner said Pelletier and her staff—which soon will include Ivy McQuade (Pelletier herself lives in Vorheesville, N.Y. outside of

Albany and has been staying with family in Shelton while Sorelle gets off the ground)—have “an amazing eye.”

“Even though there are some things in here that I think, ‘Hm that ‘s not for me,’ I still appreciate that they chose it. It’s very eclectic, there’s not any one thing in here that you say, ‘Oh it’s another one of those again?’ ”

Finding the art, and helping customers find something they like—which sometimes includes getting people who only have gone in for traditional art to find something more contemporary that complements it, Pelletier said—is a labor of love.

Her early sense of New Canaanites is that they’re “good art appreciators,” Pelletier said.

“The majority of the people who come in here, if they like traditional work, they really look at all the traditional work and all the feedback we’ve gotten is that it’s a nice collection, they like what we’ve picked for our gallery,” Pelletier said. “And then we may show them what it looks like to hang some abstracts next to traditional work, so they see how they can mix it. So sometimes people come out of the box or comfort level of just having traditional works.”

Sorelle has joined the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce, whose executive director, Tucker Murphy, said she is “thrilled to see one of our last empty stores filled and one with an independent merchant who strives to promote the arts.” Murphy added that the timing is perfect, as this year’s Art in the Windows downtown—from the chamber and Carriage Barn Arts Center—will kick off May 22 with an Art Stroll.

The name ‘Sorelle’ itself represents a deep emotional tie for Pelletier. It’s Italian for “sisters forever”—and it came from Pelletier’s mother. Though Pelletier has no siblings, she found at the time she opened her first gallery seven years ago that the effort was driven by several women, herself at the center.

“My mother actually named us,” she recalled. “At first she wanted to actually name us ‘Witches.’ We were a bunch of women at the time working at the gallery, so we were looking for a name that was kind of unique, so my mother said ‘Strega’ and I said mom that means ‘Witch’ in Italian. I said, ‘Mom, why do you want ‘witch,’ ’ and she said, ‘Oh you have good magic.’ So then I said, ‘You can’t do that, it will scare people,’ so I said, ‘How about something else like sisters or girlfriends or something?’ and she came up with Sorelle. And I loved it.”