Shoestring Show Place

Thanks to their resourcefulness and propensity for making creative uses of old buildings, artists tend to be in the advance guard of urban revitalization efforts. The most obvious local manifestation of this trend has been the transformation of the Downtown Arts District in the 25 years since artists began occupying studio space and opening galleries in the vicinity of Sixth and Trade streets.

With increased property values and rents in that part of the city, local artists are now seeking other places for studio and gallery space. One such artist, Peter Spivak, has found an affordable and satisfactory site in Ogburn Station. Financed by a $3,500 project grant from the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, Spivak last month opened what he has dubbed the Ogburn Station Community Arts Center in a small shopping-center storefront at 4348 Old Walkertown Road. On view there through July 21 is the inaugural exhibition, consisting of 20 paintings by Greensboro artist Juie Rattley III.

Spivak said that he met Rattley and was impressed by his art when they were students in the fine-arts graduate program at UNC Greensboro, which they both completed last year. It was around that time that Spivak conceived the idea of opening a public venue for visual art near his home north of Smith Reynolds Airport. Noting that there aren't any other such establishments in the neighborhood, he said, he envisioned "a place for local residents to view and discuss art created by regional artists," as well as a showplace for art made by local schoolchildren. Spivak signed a lease for the storefront in May, then spent a labor-intensive month singlehandedly clearing it out, renovating and painting it, at a cost of about $300. Measuring about 400 square feet, the one-room gallery has white-painted concrete-block walls and rudimentary track lighting. There's also a smaller back room that Spivak has begun to use as a studio, where he will presumably create his own paintings and collages in the coming months.

Monthly rent for the space is $350, and Spivak has budgeted $80 a month for utilities. Additional expenses include insurance, a business-license fee, promotional costs and refreshments for receptions to open new exhibitions. The Arts Council grant will cover his expenses until mid-November, Spivak said, by which time he will have to raise additional funds -- through art sales or otherwise -- to keep it open.

Spivak said that the presence of a neighboring hair-cutting establishment -- TJC Barber & Beauty Shop, two doors down from the gallery -- inspired him to invite Rattley to have the inaugural exhibition. Spivak knew that Rattley was working on a series of paintings set in a barber shop and figured that they would be especially appropriate for the setting and the occasion.

Seven of Rattley's paintings in the show depict the busy interior of a Greensboro barbershop catering to black customers. The most vividly evocative one, Lyons II, is also the show's largest work, measuring about 36-by-40 inches. It's a complex composition that incorporates nine figures and several of their reflections in a row of fluorescent-lighted mirrors.

Although this painting and one or two others in the show contrast black and dark browns with ocher-tinged cream colors, Rattley employs a more uniformly dark palette otherwise. In addition to the barber-shop paintings, his show includes still-lifes, domestic scenes and several portraits, three of which depict him at his easel. A few of the smaller paintings look like student work, but the barbershop scenes are generally more ambitious and more esthetically successful, indicating that Rattley is on to something with his exploration of this theme.

Spivak said that the latter paintings started attracting attention on the day he installed the show last month. Several of the neighboring barbers and their clients wandered over at the first opportunity to have a closer look, Spivak said. "Everybody was really excited about Juie's work." He said that the excitement has been mutual, and Rattley has brought his easel and paints to the shopping center to create one or more paintings set in the TJC establishment.

As for Spivak's gallery, this might seem like an unlikely location for such a venture, but who knows? Maybe Ogburn Station will become the next frontier for enterprising artists -- later to be followed by developers and their clients.

An accomplished painter

I didn't know Adele Watkins Roberts, but she was known and beloved by a number of local artists and others who have had a longtime involvement with Winston-Salem's art community. Those friends are remembering her in the wake of her death on June 30 at 79.

Familiarly known as Della, Watkins was an accomplished oil painter whose floral still-life paintings earned her a national reputation and a measure of commercial success. She was also an active participant in Winston-Salem's art community for more than half of her life, starting in 1952, when she moved here with her husband, Edgar Parsons Roberts.

Roberts received a bachelor's degree in art from Randolph Macon College in 1950 and pursued additional art studies at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and in New York. Soon after moving to Winston-Salem, she began to teach painting.

Over the years, she was active in the Arts and Crafts Association, the Arts Council, Associated Artists of Winston-Salem and the Sawtooth Center for Visual Art. She had her first local solo show in 1968, and later had solo shows in New York, San Francisco, Dallas and Palm Beach, Fla.

One of the high points of her career came in 1986, when the Sawtooth Center named her Winston-Salem's "Artist of the Year," the first year in which the center conferred that award.

■ Juie Rattley III's exhibition is on view through July 21 at the Ogburn Station Community Arts Center, 4348 Old Walkertown Road. The center's next show, portrait photographs by Christine Rucker, is scheduled for July 25-Aug. 25. For more information, call 336-830-2012.