Still life

Sauvage could also hustle; she competitively priced art for a "Holiday Art Market" at DECA in December, bringing Christmas shoppers into the area and selling $4,000 worth of art in two weeks. In deference to Blanton's multi-disciplinary mission, and after scheduling a full year of visual-art exhibitions by Texas artists, Sauvage began discussions with Our Endeavors Theater Company, a small, homeless troupe of actors who seemed to fit Blanton's grand scheme.

"I was willing to be flexible," Sauvage says, but Blanton tested her flexibility again and again. She got little direction from him and increasing pressure to bring in more money by renting out the space. But the building had few amenities, and she was forced to book raucous fraternity parties and out-of-control private concerts -- and was always grateful for the more sedate bar mitzvah crowd. "With the kind of parties we were getting, I had to take the art off the walls to protect it," she says. Blanton wanted her to look for grants and corporate sponsorships too, but Sauvage was doing everything and says the center's board was too small to offer support. Blanton and his wife, Jeanne, were the only board members.

Ironically, Blanton wanted DECA to "preserve the energy that created the history and culture of Deep Ellum" -- the same culture he had helped bulldoze out of existence. But Sauvage didn't actively seek out Deep Ellum's long-standing community of streetwise artists, including Frank Campagna (who ran Studio D in 1982), Cabe Booth, and ex-pop poppins frontman Broose Dickinson. And it really pissed them off.

Sauvage's instincts told her that most of the muralists, spray-can painters, and self-taught stragglers who remained in Deep Ellum didn't produce work that she believed a forward-looking gallery should show. Yet Sauvage tried to be diplomatic. After DECA opened its doors, she began to meet regularly at the center with about 20 members of the Deep Ellum Artists Cooperative. Member Cabe Booth recalls how the neighborhood artists set up a showdown. "When we would go to the meetings and see what Melissa had on the calendar, we'd say, This is called the Deep Ellum Center for the Arts? Some of those artists are from out of town.' We did not see representation for us," he says.

"Our concern was that a bunch of unknown artists would be solicited to represent Deep Ellum," Campagna says, "and those of us who consider ourselves Deep Ellum artists would be left out -- after everything we've been through down here all these years."

Sauvage felt blindsided by Campagna and Booth after Campagna went to the media and began to complain about the shabby treatment Deep Ellum artists were receiving at DECA. Sauvage dealt with the flak by hastily arranging an exhibition that included Campagna's and Booth's work over Thanksgiving weekend.

But by January, Sauvage had had enough. Working night and day with no staff but herself, she managed to schedule a year of decent programming and raise $6,000 in revenue for the arts center in the first three months. Yet she felt unappreciated, as if operating in hostile territory. "She was out of her element," says Amy Vercruysse, marketing director of the Deep Ellum Association. "She was not made for Deep Ellum, and Deep Ellum was not made for her."

When her old boss at the ArtCentre of Plano asked her to come back, she was ready to bail.

If she had any lingering doubts, she resolved them when she had to deal with the hordes of media camping outside DECA's door on January 31. One of Blanton's properties on Commerce Street, just a short crawl across the parking lot, was the site of a now infamous high school beer bash, rented as a party warehouse to a group of Park Cities teens. The story was front-page news. Dallas police ticketed 150 underage teens. The police investigated Blanton for possible criminal violations, but never charged him with anything. The media circus put Sauvage on the edge of a spotlight she didn't expect and couldn't stomach. One week later, she made it official and tendered her resignation.

A case can be made that Sauvage was the only one who knew what DECA should have been about. She was building an image for a nonprofit arts center, deliberately showcasing Dallas-based and regional Texas artists to build its reputation.

"She did a fine job," admits Vercruysse. "But she really did have an awful lot to carry on her shoulders. There were so many expectations; and Don, to this day, I'm not sure he fully appreciates how hard it is to keep it running. There's no way one person can do it. Melissa couldn't do it."

In the Deep Ellum Association offices, Amy Vercruysse learned of Sauvage's resignation from Blanton, who was so frustrated at this point, she says, he offered up DECA's head on a silver platter. "I got a fax the day after Melissa resigned from Don that said something to the effect that 'I'm not spending any more of my money,'" she says. "I got the impression that he was saying, 'If I don't find somebody else to keep this thing going or find a new director, then I'm closing the doors.'"