Florence Ballard her suit. Angered, Gordy ordered her to return to Detroit, and Birdsong officially replaced her, abruptly ending her tenure with the Supremes. It had been decided as early as May that Birdsong would be Ballard's official replacement once Birdsong's contract with the Bluebelles was bought out. In August 1967, the "Detroit Free Press" reported that Ballard had taken a temporary leave of absence from the group due to "exhaustion". Ballard eventually married her boyfriend, Thomas Chapman, on February 29, 1968. A week earlier, on February 22, Ballard and Motown negotiated to have Ballard released from the label. Her attorney in
Alice R. Ballard All this time, she was bonding with these little pod forms as her ideas for future forms to be made in clay percolated. The Wall Pod series eventually became the result of this lengthy but rich process.” She received her BS degree in design and MFA in painting from the University of Michigan. From 1974 to 2001 she attended workshops at the Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina. Her work is in the permanent collections of: Alice R. Ballard Alice R. Ballard. (born June 16, 1945, Florence, South Carolina) is an American ceramicist based in Greenville, South Carolina. Much