1 Last ​“WineDown” At The Grove

Cynthia Beth Rubin went to The Grove to make art out of hazy images of plankton. Susanne Radke to share her scientific expertise with biotech companies. John Hoda to write seven books, and to build his own missing heir-tracking company.

Those erstwhile neighbors at the former Ninth Square co-working space gathered one more time Wednesday afternoon to celebrate and reminisce on the role that The Grove, subsequently rebranded Agora, played in their lives and careers before it closes for good later this week.

They joined around 20 former Grove acolytes at the co-working space’s 760 Chapel St. digs for a final ​“WineDown Wednesday,” a regular tradition at the former Grove that many in attendance said fostered a sense of community amongst the freelancers and self-starters who rented desk space there.

Current and former patrons mingled over wine and dessert for the last time in the space they had long called home, and discussed the varied careers that sprouted forth from the co-working space’s fertile business ground.

An Artist Devoted To Plankton

“I’m what’s called an early adapter,” said Rubin, an artist now specializing in computer-based plankton drawings. She started producing digital art in the early 1980’s — before ​“off-the-shelf software” existed, she said.

Rubin said that in her experience, in many artist studios, ​“people don’t actually talk to each other.”

Rubin preferred the former Grove to artist-only workspaces, she said. She’s worked at the Ninth Square space on and off for around five years, and plans to stay there until its final closing.

“It’s given me a family,” she said.

She occasionally presented her art in community ​“show and tells” at the co-working space. The opportunity to receive feedback from a non-artist audience helped her grow as an artist, she said.

She even led a plankton drawing workshop for Grove participants. She said she plans run another such workshop open to the public elsewhere in the city even after the co-working space closes.

Before delving into plankton-inspired work, Rubin spent much of her career making art focused on ​“cultural heritage,” including work with images of Jewish artifacts like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

While teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), she gradually catered her courses to many of her students’ interests in nature-based art. Soon, she started incorporating the natural world into her own art — specifically in the form of oceanic micro-organisms.

In a corner office on the building’s third floor, Rubin created a few last pieces in the space over the past few months.

For those pieces, she manipulated low-resolution photographs of plankton that oceanographers had captured for their research. One image hadn’t come out the way she had wanted, so she printed it out and hand-traced the plankton shapes on top of it in bright colors. The final product featured a web of colors vaguely resembling outer space.

Most of the plankton in the images that Rubin uses are dead, she said. ​“My job is to make them feel alive.”

A Biologist-Turned-Consultant

Originally from Germany, Radke came to New Haven to conduct research at a biology lab at Yale, and, later, at a Yale-connected biotech company. But after the 2008 recession, funding for scientific research grew scarce.

“You had to write ten grants to get one,” she said. She decided it was time for a career change.

Radke soon started working for a biological consulting company based in Louisville, Kentucky, where she contributed insight and research in the life sciences to biotech and other biology-oriented companies. She didn’t want to move out of New Haven, so she worked remotely from home.

That experience was isolating, she said. ​“I was always alone.”

In search of a workplace community, Radke began renting a desk at the Grove’s original Orange Street location in 2012.

The people she met there became her close friends. She runs races with one co-worker she met at the Grove. Another, Giulia Gouge, takes care of her cat when she’s out of town.

Several years ago, Radke left her job to start her own independent life science consulting firm, Medical Innovation In Context. She said she enjoys self-employment. ​“You’re not restricted to one company,” she said.

This new line of work required a quieter work environment than the open-area space of the former Grove, she said. Unable to rent a standalone office in the Chapel Street workspace, Radke left the Grove last year and now rents out an enclosed office at the DISTRICT​‘s co-working space in Fair Haven.

“It doesn’t have the human touch of this place,” she said on Wednesday.

A Missing Heir Finder

Hoda, who worked at the Grove between 2010 and 2017, had taken a detour from his career as a private investigator to become a ​“missing heir finder.”

He discovered this path an attorney enlisted him to track down an heiress while he was still working as a private investigator. Hoda learned that he could specialize in ​“heir finding”: locating people who never learned they are heirs and charging them a certain percentage of their inheritance.

He founded his own company — International Missing Heir Finders, LLC — devoted to this line of work.

Through the company, he enlists people to sit in on probate court proceedings to find cases in which inheritors were not aware of the money they had received.

Once, he found an heir who was living under a bridge overpass. Another time, he stumbled upon an heir who was in witness protection; he found this out when he received a call from a U.S. Marshal concerned about the investigation. (Hoda has recently returned to his work as a P.I. at Hoda Investigations.)

Hoda came to the Grove after working at home for a while. He joked that he made the switch when his two cats grew agitated with him.

Hoda participated in a goal-setting workshop run by a Grove community member. He also took part in a writer’s group there, and went on to author seven fiction and non-fiction books.

“They’ve seen my growth in my writing,” he said of his friends at the co-working space.

Co-workers at the Grove connected him with a copy editor, web designer, and graphic designer for his first book, Phantasy Baseball. He celebrated his book release with a party in the office.