About

Our History

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Coker Family Gallery

On February 1st, 1966, the Roseville Community Projects Incorporated (now Blue Line Arts) held its first outreach exhibit in an old Bank of America building in Downtown Roseville, directed by David Fiddyment, the first Board President. With the help of devoted board members, volunteers, and donors, the organization has grown over the years, still holding true to its original intent: to support the arts.

The Roseville Community Projects Incorporated bought the Haman House in 1974 to house the Roseville Arts Center. For the next 30 years, this center created exhibitions supporting visual and performing arts in the community. With the dramatic growth in Placer County at the turn of this new century, the Blue Line Arts board of directors recognized a need for change in order to successfully continue its mission. In 2003, the Board of Directors decided that the art center needed its own home in order to grow.

In February 2008, after selling its former facility and completing a successful capital campaign, the newly-dubbed Roseville Arts opened its new, state-of-the-art gallery, known now as Blue Line Arts. This new 5,000 square-foot facility allowed for exhibition space for established and emerging artists, as well as an education space for children and adults. The organization underwent yet another name change in February of 2013 to coincide with the 5 year anniversary of the creation of the new gallery; changing from “Blue Line Gallery” to “Blue Line Arts,” this change is not only to provide more opportunities to residents of Placer County, but it is also an effort to return to the original mission of the Roseville Arts Center.

Our Mission

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Blue Line Arts is a regional cultural hub committed to fostering impactful arts experiences. Through exhibitions, educational programming, and public arts initiatives, we support a full creative life for all.

Board of Directors

Clifton Taylor

President

Clifton Taylor leads Taylor Builders, a land development and investment company based in Roseville, CA. Clifton has two decades of real estate and asset mana...

Yolanda Ramirez

Powell Real Estate

Susan Ramirez

Vice President

Susan is the Director of Finance at Summit Funding, Inc. Susan has a Bachelors of Science in Accounting from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.  Susa...

Sheree Meyer

Secretary

Dean of College of Arts & Letters Sacramento State

Sheree Meyer has been a member of the Sacramento State Hornet family since 1991—as a Professo...

Jennifer Lugris

Jennifer Lugris (Packer) ​is a Sacramento-based artist. She received her MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her paintings have been exh...

Natasha Martin

Natasha has been a Parks, Recreation & Libraries Manager for the City of Roseville for the past 10 years.  Her 30 year career in Libraries and Museums h...

Chris Pistone

Financial Advisor, Robert W. Baird & Co.

Chris is currently a financial advisor with Baird, he...

Trung Cao

Trung Cao is a lifetime artist who has exhibited in art galleries and museums, worked on art commissions, and teaches painting and drawing. Complementing his...

Jeffrey Spencer

Jeffrey Spencer leads product marketing at Tailscale, a software company that provides zero-configuration virtual private networks (VPNs), based in Toronto...

Staff

Zachary Myers

Zachary Myers, the Gallery Coordinator of Blue Line Arts, has lived in the greater Sacramento region since 2010. He is a long time member of the art commun...

MaryTess Mayall

Executive Director

MaryTess Mayall, the Executive Director of Blue Line Arts, was born and raised in Roseville, California. Her appreciation for...

Adriana Griffin

Programs Coordinator

Adriana Griffin joined Blue Line Arts in January of 2023. As the new Programs Coordinator, Adriana facilitates much needed Tour Talk Create field trip experi...

Maddy Harlow

Programs Associate

As Programs Associate, Maddy assists with creating content for the Tour Talk & Create program, and can often be found bringing her experience as an Anima...

Statement on Cultural Equity

To support a full creative life for all, Blue Line Arts commits to championing policies and practices of cultural equity that empower a just, inclusive and equitable nation.

Cultural equity embodies the values, policies, and practices that ensure that all people—including but not limited to those who have been historically underrepresented based on race/ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, citizenship status, or religion—are represented in the development of arts policy; the support of artists; the nurturing of accessible, thriving venues for expression; and the fair distribution of programmatic, financial, and informational resources.

  • In the United States, there are systems of power that grant privilege and access unequally such that inequity and injustice result, and that must be continuously addressed and changed.
  • Cultural equity is critical to the long-term viability of the arts sector. 
  • We must all hold ourselves accountable, because acknowledging and challenging our inequities and working in partnership is how we will make change happen.
  • Everyone deserves equal access to a full, vibrant creative life, which is essential to a healthy and democratic society. 
  • The prominent presence of artists challenges inequities and encourages alternatives.

To provide informed, authentic leadership for cultural equity, we strive to…

  • Pursue cultural consciousness throughout our organization through substantive learning and formal, transparent policies.
  • Acknowledge and dismantle any inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and services, and report organization progress.
  • Commit time and resources to cultivate more diverse perspectives within the organization.

To pursue needed systemic change related to equity, we strive to…

  • Encourage substantive learning to build cultural consciousness and to proliferate pro-equity policies and practices by all of our constituencies and audiences.
  • Generate and aggregate quantitative and qualitative research related to equity to make incremental, measurable progress towards cultural equity more visible.
  • Advocate for public and private-sector policy that promotes cultural equity.

Freedom of Speech Commitment

Freedom of speech is the foundation of our communities and our nation. The works in this institution’s exhibits may awe, illuminate, challenge, unsettle, confound, provoke, and, at times, offend. We defend the freedom to create content and exhibit such work from anywhere in the world, and we recognize the privilege of living in a country where creating, exhibiting, and experiencing such work is a constitutional right.

To exhibit a work of art is not to endorse the work or the vision, ideas, and opinions of the artist. It is to uphold the right of all to experience diverse visions and views. If and when controversies arise from the exhibition of a work of art, we welcome public discussion and debate with the belief that such discussion is integral to the experience of the art. Consistent with our fundamental commitment to freedom of speech, however, we will not censor exhibitions in response to political or ideological pressure.