Apartments at One Arts Plaza hosted opening-art exhibit on Friday

Touting spacious balconies with downtown views!

Marc Lee

The Arts Apartments exterior

DALLAS — The Arts Apartments, a new rental complex on Ross Avenue next to One Arts Plaza in downtown Dallas, held a grand opening on Friday that became a convenient merger of commerce and the arts.

The complex recruited more than 40 artists from around Texas to display their work in a dozen units on the property. It gave the artists an opportunity to show their work to an audience they might not otherwise find, and it gave the building a chance to get hundreds of people in the doors and looking at rental properties, as well as imply by association that it's a place where artists hang.

More than 300 people trooped through the showing, stopping first on the second floor by the pool, where a caterer served Mexican food. The sixth floor -- the top floor of the building -- is where the units were open for showing, although the logistics of the event were a little sketchy. There were no signs, making it hard to figure out where to go. The elevators were tiny and the stairs weren't easy to find.

Artists' media ran from paintings to collages to sculpture to found pieces such as the ancient gun in a wooden box lined with red velvet, to conceptual pieces such as a closet filled with beautiful pale iridescent balloons.

One memorable unit had a blue theme, with blue lighting, and blue-themed art installations, and a blue music room with a kind of mobile made of vinyl records strung from the ceiling and where a DJ accompanied by a drummer performed. Another unit had a series of crocheted panels on the wall and a table set for a tea service with China cups and saucers.

Some artists lingered in the apartments where their work was displayed, like Austin artist James Willard Pierce, whose work consisted of these interesting paintings done on weather-beaten pieces of wood.

The apartments were, how do you say, compactly designed, with open floorplans that tried to mask the fact that the living space was fairly small. They had fake hardwood on the floor that was a very convincing (and surely more durable) fake. The outside hallways were narrow and traffic flow was maze-like. With units priced from $1,000 up to about $3,000 -- for floorplans that range from 610 to 1445 square feet -- the likelihood of any artists actually living there is slim. But maybe residents will buy art and hang it on the walls.