http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/dec/06/gallery-to-cross-blur-usual-lines/

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Sara A. Chaitin

RedLine-Project Manager

6400 S. Fiddler's Green Circle, Ste. 2000

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Gallery to cross, blur usual lines

By Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Color it RedLine

* Where: 2350 Arapahoe St.

* What: turning a warehouse into an arts center

* Who: photographer and philanthropist Laura Merage

* Size: 20,000 square feet

* Purchase price: just less than $2 million

* Architect: Semple Brown Design

* Renovation budget: $800,000

Laura Merage, behind a pole with her arms out, illustrates the wide-open space in what she envisions to be the Redline Gallery, 2350 Arapahoe St.

Merage is an artist who plans to turn this old warehouse into a visual arts center.

RedLine wants to be about crossing over from a world of conformity to one of creativity.

"Red is the sign of stop, a sign of danger," says Laura Merage, an artist and philanthropist seeking artists and board members for a new art center she wants to coax out of a warehouse at 2350 Arapahoe St.

"For us, all those images will flip around 180 degrees when we enter. When you walk over the red line, it is a reminder that you are leaving your inhibitions behind. The rules we have to abide by do not apply here."

Merage has been spreading that message to neighborhood groups and schools near the site, talking about a program that includes artists in residence, affordable studios and agreements that require community service of artists.

Last Sunday, Merage took her plans to the community at large, with an open house that drew about 100 people curious about RedLine's plan to link artists with artists and artists with community.

Merage, who has been visiting and researching art centers around the country, settled her center in the area that ties together Curtis Park and Arapahoe Square.

"This is the place to be as far as I'm concerned," Merage said of the neighborhood's diverse population in an interview before the open house.

"I want to help up-and-coming artists, and especially midcareer artists. I count myself as a midcareer artist, and it's an uphill battle going to the next level."

The structure (it still says "Star for Parts" out front) will include 13 studios, including larger spaces for two artists- in-residence and Merage, and 10 for area artists who can benefit from interaction with them.

Semple Brown Design principal Bryan Schmidt has created a plan where the interior is ringed with studios, a cafe/ bookstore, library and entryway. An exhibition space is in the center, with a plaza in front.

"Because Laura is an artist, she understood the functionality of the place," Schmidt said during the open house. "She could talk about what would make this a special place, about crossing over a threshhold."

The project is in the process of getting permits to work on the structure, where interior walls will not reach fully to the ceiling and natural light will depend on several small skylights and a flexible lighting grid. Merage has commissioned Tom Guiton, new to Denver from Los Angeles, to create a mural on the exterior.

Studios will carry a fee of about $80 to $100 a month for about 300 square feet. Merage is building a board of directors and advisory board (possibly including photographer Mark Sink, artist Tracy Weil of Weilworks and Guiton).

A selection committee will pick artists, who will be expected to work in the center and with the community, adding the ring of part co-op gallery and part outreach. Isn't that asking a lot of artists, who work to support themselves and then use free time to make art?

"The artists will choose from a menu of community service projects," she said. "It won't be that many hours. When you haven't done it or are juggling that many things, it seems difficult. Once you do it, not only is it inspirational and helps your art to connect to the community, it comes back to you.

"We artists have the mentality that we go into a studio and work. We close the door. That's fine, up to a point, but we need to be part of a community."

That idea intrigued two artists at the open house. Noah Sodano and Nicole Banowetz, both 26, are partners and graduates of Colorado State University. They make sculpture in the bedroom of their Capitol Hill apartment, and sleep in the living room.

"The most interesting part is all the interaction that is going to take place," said Banowetz, who works at the Museum of Outdoor Arts and Art Street.

Added Sodano: "This looks a lot like the art community in general, taking all the best things and putting it all together, with exhibition space next to a cafe and bookstore."

The idea of a couple of hours of community service a week interested Sodano, who works in marketing and Web design.

"With art being taken out of schools, there's a perception that art doesn't have much to do with the community. But it's not a closed box where art happens. This makes it part of the community."

Merage is trying to stick to an $800,000 budget to complete the project, which will be operated as a public charitable organization.

Though Merage and her husband, David, have established the David and Laura Merage Foundation and the David and Laura Merage Arts Foundation, she says RedLine is its own entity and not under the wing of either fund.

(The first foundation has assets of $40 million, according to the tax return filed for the fiscal year ending Nov. 30, 2006. It was established a year after David Merage and his brother Paul Merage sold their frozen-snack firm, Chef America, to Nestle for a reported $2.6 billion.)

"I'm putting the seed money in (RedLine), but we must raise a lot of the funds," said Laura Merage. "It is important to me that people understand it is theirs, which is hard to do when it belongs to a private foundation.

"It's not mine, not for me. It's an idea I had because I know what a difference it can make for an artist."