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Steamboat Springs — Marc and Audrey Small took a chance by renting a downtown Steamboat Springs space to 24 artists who didn't know one another, artist Sandra Sherrod said.

Of course, those artists had plenty of time to get acquainted with each other while renovating the former Steamboat Pilot printing building at 1009 Lincoln Ave. The biggest challenge to starting the Artists' Gallery of Steamboat - a gallery owned equally by the 24 participating artists - was building a team, Sherrod said.

"We needed to build a team because that's going to be the thing that is going to carry us through," Sherrod said. "But the renovation crew would say the renovation was the toughest."

The artists hired only one outside person - a plumber - to help finish the space.

"I have never seen so many self-starters of what needed to be done," Sherrod said. "It took one whole weekend to decoupage the floor. Can you imagine 14 artists with their butts in the air for two days?"

The Artists' Gallery of Steamboat opens to the public today. But what visitors see today won't be what they see in subsequent visits.

"We are going to be leasing out the back room, but we may make it into studios and classrooms one day," Sherrod said. "For the first two or three months, every Friday night we will have goodies and hot malt cider for people to come in. We want this to be a community center. It's a gallery and a gathering place."

The front room will feature one piece from each artist for the opening, but it will later be used to host group shows of three member artists at a time. The first show will feature Robert Dieckhoff, Susan Gill Jackson and Bill Sanders.

Artists also will have 12 linear feet to display their work. Prints and originals will be available.

The represented artists are both professional and emerging artists who use almost every medium, including ceramics, jewelry, glass, weaving, photography, print making, quilting, bronze sculpture, and oil, acrylic and pastel paintings.

It is important to the artists to maintain the historical context of the building, which was built in 1909.

"We are still finding old newspapers, and at some point we will either put together an auction or do something with the artifacts we find," Sherrod said. "You can feel the energy in this building, where all the news came into our community and went back out again."

The most exciting part of the new gallery for Sherrod is the opportunity it created.

"It's about just having this art gallery and knowing that we would all get to hang our art," she said. "There is so much talent in this community, but no outlet."