Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

The murals painted on the walls are by cartoonist Gary Panter. Panter was the head set designer for the 1980s TV show Pee-wee's Playhouse.

Jeremy Kolosine, director of ReceptorsMusic Inc., works on an interactive display of electronic music and video using old gaming devices such as Game Boys and Ataris.

Odds are, something in the new Art Venture space, which officially opens Sunday at the Taubman Museum of Art, is going to bring out the little kid in everyone.

Just take a look at David Brown, the museum's director of art.

"It's like being behind the curtain in 'The Wizard of Oz,' " said Brown, standing at the controls of the "lumia," or light machine, while giving a recent tour. He had a big grin on his face as he worked the colored light levers.

Art Venture, the museum's very popular education component, originally was created for the use of young children at the art museum's previous home in Center in the Square.

Like the museum itself, the new Art Venture has been completely reinvented, with an eye to broadening its appeal. Brown's hope is that people whose imaginations are stirred by the exhibitions in the galleries above will come here and put their imaginations right to work.

"It's intended to get the creative juices flowing," he said.

Brains-on, hands-on

This is not your father's Art Venture. Or then again, maybe it is. Or even your grandfather's.

There is a strong retro character to go along with the cutting-edge technology in the 2,200-square-foot space.

Along with the computer music station, by Jeremy Kolosine of Receptors Music in Roanoke, and the video screens, there's the do-it-yourself light show, with its clear echoes of the psychedelic 1960s. The museum also is seeking a vintage printing press for its print shop.

Certainly there is a hands-on quality about nearly everything. The new Art Venture is a place to roll up your sleeves and get busy making art, or at least thinking about it. As a museum new release puts it: "There are places to sit, pause, create, think, laugh."

To build the new Art Venture, Brown and the museum assembled an all-star cast. The sculpted furniture and the work stations are by architect/artists Allan and Ellen Wexler of New York. The Lumia Lab, in which visitors use dozens of controls to create their own light canvas, was designed by Joshua White.

And who is Joshua White? If you are old enough, and lucky enough, you might have seen one of his light shows at the legendary Fillmore East auditorium in New York, at a concert by Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. He also did a light show at Woodstock and has worked since as a television producer.

"I just leaped at the opportunity to do this," said White of working on Art Venture. He said the technology has come a long way since the messy colored oils they worked with back in 1969. "Better light sources. Everything's better."

Gary Panter, whose instructive doodling decorates the Art Venture walls, was the set designer for the 1980s TV show, "Pee-wee's Playhouse." Panter also is the creator of Jimbo, who is described on his Web site as "a post-nuclear punk-rock cartoon character."

Panter said that his wall art, which shows how to create colorful cartoons characters and other figures step by step, is aimed at making the business of drawing less threatening.

"Most people are intimidated by drawing," he said. "I want to make people want to run out and draw pictures."

Brown, formerly chief curator at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C., is a career innovator who previously installed a 60-foot boat and a tobacco barn in an art gallery.

The driving force behind the new Art Venture, Brown said, was to expand its appeal to all ages. He imagines grandparents trying to persuade the kids to stay a little longer in the new Art Venture space, as well as vice versa.

"It's for the little ones to the big ones," Brown said.

Birthday parties welcome

Why did it take so long?

Art Venture, whose opening follows the opening of the rest of the new $66 million museum by more than four months, was thrown off schedule by a change of course midway through the design process, said Kimberly Templeton, the museum's director of external affairs.

"We decided we just weren't going in the direction we wanted to go," she said. "That's when we brought the Wexlers and Joshua White and Gary Panter and Jeremy Kolosine on board. We're all very happy that we got the product we wanted."

Templeton declined to say how much the program cost, though she confirmed that major donors included longtime Art Venture supporters Sheila and Maury Strauss.

Birthdays parties were popular at the previous Art Venture space -- and the new museum has a special birthday room, Templeton noted.

Birthday packages using both rooms are available with or without catering. In addition, the new museum has an education and outreach studio, which focuses more on lectures, workshops, crafts and after-school programs than the specialized work stations that Art Venture offers.

Asked if the museum expects the opening to increase attendance figures, Templeton said, "Certainly."