Across from Pierce Lake in Chelsea, tucked down a short road off Old U.S. Highway 12, is an art gallery that's known primarily to the people who live right next to it.

But the high-quality exhibitions it stages six times a year deserve the same sort of audiences that attend more forward-facing public galleries and museums in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

Gallery 100, located inside the Silver Maples of Chelsea retirement community, just opened its final exhibition of the year: Colorful Explorations, which runs from November 5 to January 5, and "invites visitors to experience the power of color, form, and imagination, offering a chance to engage with art that inspires reflection, emotion, and connection." It features works by artists Gwyn McKay, Chris Huang, Susan Clinthorne, Ashley Menth, Bill Knudstrup, Keto Green, and Lulu Fall.

Led by Silver Maples resident Lois DeLeon and Winn Nichols, the retirement community's director of life enrichment, Gallery 100 highlights Michigan artists. It started as a simple idea in 2009 by Glen Paulsen, former president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, who lived at Silver Maples until his passing in 2012. DeLeon took the idea and ran with it, bringing on Nichols in 2021.

Since then, the dynamic duo has built up Gallery 100's social media presence and marketing, acquired small grants to improve the unassuming space—a long hallway—and continued to book forward-looking exhibits, including hosting the Prison Creative Arts Project twice.

With Colorful Explorations now open, we caught up with Nichols to discuss Gallery 100, one of the more uniquely located third-space galleries in Washtenaw County.

Q: How did Gallery 100 come to be? What was the space used for before it became the gallery?
A: Gallery 100 came to be in 2009. Glen Paulsen, a retired architect and professor from Cranbrook Academy of Art, was living at Silver Maples and saw the empty hallway around our performance space as a potential spot to exhibit art. Silver Maples made a small investment at the time of some lights and a wall-hanging system. This professor had the great idea, but asked fellow resident Lois DeLeon to fill the space with art. Lois is a retired Social Worker with a background in the arts, with her first degree in fiber arts.

Lois spent many years visiting gallery exhibits and art shows in Southeast Michigan, developing relationships with artists and art guilds, and established the original Gallery 100 with six shows a year. We still follow this style, but are looking to add more shows. In 2021, Lois asked me to help her run the Gallery, and I happily accepted. I saw a need to market the gallery and applied for a small grant from the Chelsea Community Foundation, and was awarded $5,000 in 2022 to spend on marketing and branding. We did well with this grant, and Silver Maples invested in the Gallery space in 2023 with new lighting fixtures, flooring, and now we have a budget that will continue to fund marketing the space.

Q: Were there any other "third space"-style galleries that inspired its creation?
A: I don't know about the inspiration. I believe it really was the art background of the professor that was able to bring it to Silver Maples. We have always had a special community that supports the arts. We have two art committees. One of them is responsible for purchasing new artworks to hang in the resident hallways so we don't have too much "hotel art." The art committee is funded through the Silver Maples Life Enrichment budget as well as donated funds.

Q: I love that six different high-quality exhibitions come to a senior / assisted-living community every year. But is it challenging to get the community that lives outside of Silver Maples to visit?
A: That has been the biggest challenge, local artists and art supporters know of the space, but the greater community is still learning about it. We hope with continued marketing and thoughtful partnerships for shows in the future we'll continue to grow the community's awareness of the space.

What's so unique is that we're located inside a nonprofit, so for an art gallery, we don't have rent, etc., to worry about. We aren't going anywhere! We also don't take commission from artists; this may change down the road to help pay for advertising the gallery, but for now, we're able to fund advertising with our budget and are happy to provide a space for artists to show and sell work. Depending on the show, we can sell quite a few works. Two notable shows this year were of Craig Cossey, who sold eight pieces, and David Kaemming, who sold 14 pieces.

Q: How do you go about selecting the artists?
A: We have multiple ways; often we work with guilds, who have their own themes we happily showcase. We also have a small Gallery 100 focus group of four to five residents working with myself to come up with ideas for shows. This group loves hosting diverse art. We've hosted the Prison Creative Arts Project twice for two exhibits in the last five years, for example. The show we're getting ready to put up came from me digging into local artists in Detroit and the Ann Arbor area and tying it together with local Chelsea artists, too. I reach out to artists and invite them to the Gallery to see if they're interested in exhibiting, and we go from there.

Q: What do the Silver Maples residents think of having an art space in their community? How do they help out with the exhibitions? Have any of the residents had their artwork shown there?
A: I think residents love having this connection to the arts in their homes. Even people without art backgrounds enjoy walking through the exhibits. It adds to our environment in such a positive way. It also gets folks talking about the art, too, which is always great. The focus group contributes ideas and input for themes and styles of art. Some of them come help with the set-up of a show. Residents have shown their artwork over the years. We've gotten a little more specific, though, since marketing the space—we'll exhibit resident art if they've been active artists before moving in, and the focus group wants to show their art.

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.

"Colorful Explorations" runs from November 5 to January 5 at Gallery 100, 100 Silver Maples Dr., Chelsea. The opening reception is on Sunday, November 9, from 2 pm–3:30 pm. Attendees can meet the artists while enjoying appetizers in an informal setting. Gallery hours are Monday–Friday 10 am–5 pm and Saturday–Sunday 10 am–3 pm.