It's Only Rock 'n' Roll By John Swenson United Press International On a cool, overcast January morning in San Antonio, a small group of artists, writers and musicians assembled on a bank of the San Antonio river at a wooden table behind the Blue Star Arts Complex south of town. Guitarist Will Owen-Gage, a 15-year-old virtuoso in the mold of the late Texas guitar hero Stevie Ray Vaughan, picked up a battered Ovation acoustic guitar and started playing the Jimi Hendrix blues "Red House." George Yepes, the mastermind behind a multidisciplinary arts project he calls the "Art Dacha," which has brought all these people together, signals his approval with an eyebrow-lifting grin that appeared to cue the passionate spotlight of the South Texas sun as it eviscerated the mist and, like a theatrical set change, revealed a new backdrop of a cloudless, translucent blue sky. Yepes calls the studio where he works through the night to the accompaniment of Hendrix tapes "the Red House." "There's a red house over yonder, that's where my baby stays," Owen-Gage sings as a ray of sunlight pings off of the heavy gauge metal bass string of his guitar. He let the line fade into the air then bent his top string all the way up the fretboard for a stinging, sustained blues note. Yepes smiled his trademark smile -- the kid aced this "audition." A new star for the Art Dacha was on board. After the impromptu session, Yepes led his little band of artists downriver to an old abandoned granary he envisions as the site for an arts complex. The site, inactive for some 25 years, is a rusting, desolate series of 18 silos followed by a trio of enormous warehouses with 100-foot ceilings. Abandoned railroad tracks once connected to the adjacent still-active railroad line run between the buildings. Just cleaning up this colossus would be a daunting task, but Yepes perceives this site through the eyes of a visionary. Instead of a rusted-out white elephant with rough cement floors and sections of the roof exposed to the elements, he sees a thriving, interdisciplinary arts cooperative. "We can rock out here," Yepes laughs as he surveys the cavernous warehouses. "There are no sidewalks here, no traffic. People can pull their cars up and use the headlights to light the stages at night. We can have big weenie roasts as the music plays and artists paint." As he speaks, a long Southern Pacific freight train rambled alongside the site. Yepes gestures upriver, where downtown San Antonio has been given a dramatic facelift with a huge, tourist-friendly Riverwalk connected to hotels, restaurants and shops. "The city is talking about expanding Riverwalk downriver to the site of the abandoned Lone Star brewery south of here within the next five years. This is a unique moment in history," Yepes says. "It's like (early 20th-century) Vienna when it switched from a monarchy to a republic. They brought in the artists to redefine the city. That's what we can do here in San Antonio." Yepes is a short, intense man dressed in paint-splattered black clothing, with dark eyes that flash in sync with his quick, cackling smile. Somebody asked the two if they had official permission to embark on this project. "We're not asking anybody for permission," Yepes says. "We're just doing it. Courtney says 'We don't know the rules and we don't want to know the rules.'" Yepes is no stranger to grand gestures. He grew up in California during the 1960s, witnessing the East L.A. riots and the social activism of the hippies before going on to a career painting spectacular, often-controversial murals that merged powerful religious and political themes. Images of the crucifixion, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene are fused with Afro-Mexican iconography and contemporary social criticism in striking, dreamlike set pieces. Yepes' partner, painter Courtney Reid, learned from her father, a Cubist and later abstract expressionist who went on to become a set designer in Hollywood. The two moved from their studio in downtown Los Angeles to San Antonio last March and rented studio space at Blue Star. "When we came to visit, the galleries and the San Antonio art world in general were very receptive," says Reid, a willowy redhead whose dreamlike canvasses are influenced by abstract expressionism and have a ghostly, mythic cast to them. "But then when we came to live here suddenly everything changed. We were told there was a three-year waiting period for shows, and found we couldn't exhibit." So Yepes and Reid took matters into their own hands and started holding shows in their studios, then Yepes took one of his large works and installed it outside as part of San Antonio's "First Friday" public art fairs. "We were doing wood engravings, making ink prints and selling them on the spot, while George was painting outdoors as the people came to look at the work. We started selling and people were saying how much they appreciated it because they were starting to think that the First Fridays didn't include enough new work." Later in the year the pair put together a Halloween party and art show and invited a group of young artists from the area. "We were looking at those warehouses and imagining what we could do there, and George just decided to take them over and convert them to art spaces," says Reid. Reid and Yepes put out an open call over the Internet for artists, musicians and poets to join in what they described as a "Woodstock for Art." Hundreds of responses came from around the world, and 35 artists and musicians have already toured the space and plan to begin working there in February. Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International