Still life

At the beginning of this decade, it became clear that paradise was in the hands of businessmen. Don Blanton, one of the foremost property owners in the area, would come under fire from locals for repeatedly raising rents, running out his more boho tenants, and overcharging for the parking spaces he controlled. Blanton started buying real estate in Deep Ellum during the late 1960s, when it was nothing but a warehouse district. But in 1983 -- as younger, hipper tenants started to discover the area -- Blanton formed Txon Real Estate Co., hoping to actually profit from his investments. By 1988, he and other landlords in the area were turning Deep Ellum into the West End -- but, paradoxically, always with the caveat that "we don't want it to become the West End." No matter: In May 1992, the Deep Ellum Association, a consortium of Deep Ellum landlords, merchants, and bar owners, of which Blanton was president, went so far as to create brochures about Deep Ellum that were distributed to thousands of tourists through the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau.

In 1996, Blanton found himself at odds with Barry Annino and other local real estate developers who wanted to run the tattoo parlors out of Deep Ellum and clean up the area, paving the way for apartment buildings and even more restaurants and furniture stores. Yet it was too little, too late. Old-timers were chagrined, but slightly amused, when Club Clearview founder and owner Jeff Swaney -- now a real estate developer in Deep Ellum -- and partner Sam Paulos, a local record-label owner who is now on the DECA board, shut down punk-rock sanctuary The Orbit Room in June 1998. That's what happens when irony doesn't pay the rent.

Blanton, now 58, makes the Deep Ellum of the '80s sound like his own blank canvas. His ability to visualize all that decaying properties, transmission shops, and havens to Hell's Angels could become is a testament to an innate sense of aesthetics and a short-lived education in architecture at Texas Tech.

Where Blanton settled is a long way from West Texas. He lives in Deep Ellum, walks its streets, knows his neighbors. A study in contradictions, he seems troubled that his and other real estate developers' trying to improve Main Street and pushing for residential rezoning contributed to a mass exodus of the artists that gave the district its bohemian personality and gritty charm.

His love of art seems genuine as he points to each of the dozens of art objects all over the loft where he lives, in a Deep Ellum building he found roofless, then rehabbed. Blanton recites the artists' names, their connection to Deep Ellum, where they are now. He remembers their first shows, or their last shows, and he'll tell you which paintings were a bargain, and which were not. He has abstracts by David McCullough, artful ceramics by Vicki Sheets, and a hanging sculpture of acrobats on a trapeze by Wayne Amarine, whom he calls "the spotted-cow guy."

Whether out of love for Deep Ellum artists, or out of guilt, or for reasons that are strictly dollars and cents, Blanton and his wife, Jeanne, set up a nonprofit organization, the Deep Ellum Center for the Arts, to renovate the Theatre Gallery, which he had owned even before its Russell Hobbs heyday. Except for an occasional warehouse party, the building had been vacant for the last 10 years. Blanton says he committed himself to the project in an attempt to resurrect a Deep Ellum art scene that he believes is as much a part of the area as its music. In July 1998, Blanton told the Dallas Observer, "I want to bring the artists back to Deep Ellum," and said DECA would hang art shows, try live music, and feature poetry readings. Although he said "there are no limitations, no boundaries, to the type of stuff the center will host," he was adamant that DECA would not be perceived as the second coming of the Theatre Gallery. "Russell and Jeff attracted a bit of a rowdy crowd there."

The first year for any new venture is always hard; for a nonprofit, even harder; for an arts endeavor, harder still. Deeanna Mercer, with whom Blanton worked at Txon Real Estate and the Deep Ellum Association, helped get the fledgling art venue off the drawing board, but when Mercer couldn't make a long-term commitment to the place, Blanton found Melissa Sauvage, a young self-starter so eager to get back into the arts, she leaped before she really looked.

Blanton says Melissa Sauvage looked perfect on paper. She was a polished public relations professional with a passion for the arts. She had hands-on experience too, having served as the ArtCentre of Plano's executive director from its inception, and, after a stint as a spin doctor at Baylor Medical Center, she was ready to get back into the arts scene. "I had opened an arts facility before," Sauvage says. "I knew what it took."

Sauvage's approach was to use Deep Ellum as a locator rather than as an art movement. DECA could be like Turner & Runyon, Conduit Gallery, and Barry Whistler Gallery, a well-respected art space that happened to be in Deep Ellum, not a testament to a long-past heyday or an impossible-to-define Deep Ellum style. She filled the arts center with show after show of solid visual art, her forte, launching with Frederick William McElroy's abstracts on September 26, 1998, when DECA officially opened its doors. McElroy had worked in a Deep Ellum studio from 1980 to '86, but had moved out and moved on.