WOODLAND — They come from across the street and across town, one at a time and in small clusters to claim a stool, a little space and some collective inspiration to work on a drawing, a silk screen or an art project of their choice.

Since mid-January, the UC Davis-run TANA youth art center has been open for business often five days a week, including daylong sessions on Saturdays.

“It’s a good place. It will help some kids stay out of trouble,” said 18-year-old Alex Ibarra, unwittingly expressing the essence of the vision that drove a six-year crusade to convert a Yolo County Housing warehouse into a youth art studio.

The center, conceived and operated by the UC Davis Department of Chicana/o Studies, is a throwback to community art workshops that existed in more urban settings decades ago. TANA stands for Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer, or Art Workshop of the New Dawn.

Designed to appeal to teens

Renovated with $342,000 in federal grants, the center is across the street from a large, subsidized housing neighborhood and was designed to appeal to teenagers and other youth who live there and throughout the community.

Through silk-screen printing and mural painting, the center will attempt to cultivate the cultural and artistic life of the community, while encouraging participants to seek higher education and self-determination, supporters say.

“Art is like magic. It can lift people from the ashes,” said Malaquias Montoya, the UC Davis professor emeritus behind the project, when it finally opened in December.

“What this center is about is to bring art and culture — even for a moment — to lighten the load of the people we are trying to reach and, in that moment, they can see a better tomorrow,” Montoya said.

Saturdays are popular

Carlos Jackson, an assistant Chicana/o studies professor and director of TANA, says budding artists have been pouring into the center on Saturdays, with smaller groups for the afternoon weekday sessions.

Most bring their own concepts for silk screens, although mural-painting classes are taught twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“Once we opened the doors, they just started coming,” Jackson said. “My main priority is getting a lot of younger kids, kids who live in the neighborhood to feel like this is their place and to give them something to do.”

Sitting nearby, T.J. Gonzales, a 17-year-old Woodland High School junior, was adding finishing touches to a pair of drawings he hopes to reproduce as his first silk screen. Gonzales said he comes to the center every day it is open.

“I want to become an artist just like these guys here,” the teenager said, alluding to Jackson and his UC Davis student assistants.

“I enjoy being here,” Gonzales continued. “When I go home, I draw for three to four hours by myself. When I come here, they have all these tools and work space I can use.”

A few minutes later, when three younger girls arrive together, Jackson gives a quick reminder of the rules.

“There’s no running around. There’s no food,” he says. “People drop stuff and then the mice come.”

In addition to providing a multipurpose gathering place for the larger community, many hope the TANA center will provide university role models for local youth.

‘Access is crucial’

“As the daughter of a sharecropper who was the first in his family to go to college, I know first-hand the power of education,” said Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.

“But access is crucial and TANA is a terrific way of bringing the university to the community and the community to the university.”

The funds that financed the remodeling of the 3,600-square-foot maintenance shed were awarded by the city of Woodland from its allocation of federal community development block grants.

Strengthening partnerships

Woodland Mayor Skip Davies said the project provided “a great opportunity for the city to strengthen our partnerships with UC Davis and Yolo County Housing” to benefit Woodland youth.

“The opportunity to create and study art will be a lifelong asset for those who choose to participate,” Davies said.

Lisa Baker, executive director of the housing agency, called the center’s opening one of the year’s highlights for the agency and greater Woodland area. The housing authority provided the building under a $1-a-year lease.

“The center is an opportunity to bring art education to the ‘front door’ of our housing community, while helping to engage older youth and teens,” Baker said.

“It will also offer a way to improve awareness of opportunities through the arts, advanced education and UC Davis.”

An extension of the university

The center also will serve as an extension of the university where other UC events open to the community can be held.

Earlier classes conducted through Chicana/o Studies produced existing murals at Pioneer and Woodland high schools, and Beamer, Freeman and Dingle elementary schools in Woodland.

Murals at the Carleton Club and on the side of Taquería Guadalajara were completed by the Chicana/o Studies Department in cooperation with the Yolo Family Resource Center and the Woodland Coalition for Youth.