Photograph by Spruill Center for the Arts
Chamblee is well on its way to becoming an arts destination. This month, Dunwoody-based nonprofit Spruill Center for the Arts opens a collection of 15 artist workspaces in the former Chamblee City Hall building on Peachtree Road. “We think it is the proverbial win-win-win,” says Spruill CEO Alan Mothner. “It’s a win for Chamblee, it’s a win for Spruill, and it’s a win for the artists.”
In 2025, Spruill reached out to Chamblee officials to discuss using their former city hall building, which had been vacant since 2022 (when staff relocated to a new location). The adaptive reuse of an existing building appealed to the city as smart civic problem-solving, and for Spruill, it was more cost-effective than new construction.
Spruill began an interior renovation in March to retrofit the former offices into individual visual-artist studios ranging from 105 to 198 square feet. The building features new gallery space, capitalizing on the natural light from large existing windows facing the street. “It’s a vibrant, inviting space,” Mothner says.
Founded in 1975, Spruill Center for the Arts is devoted to promoting art through education and exhibitions. The organization, whose main building is on Ashford Dunwoody Road, is funded by a mix of grants, private donations, and course fees; it offers classes for youth and adults in pottery, painting, and other mediums and runs a gallery where professionals can sell their work. Mothner says the natural next step in supporting working artists was to build them affordable studio space.
Spruill rents the Chamblee studios at below-market cost: Individual spaces, priced according to size, range from $158 to $255 per month. This spring, 39 artists applied for a one-year lease, and a juried committee selected the 15 new tenants—a mix of painters, sculptors, and other visual artists—who move in this month. The adjacent gallery space is open five days a week, and the public is also welcome for quarterly, meet-the-artists open houses.
The organization’s studios are part of an effort to boost Chamblee into a mini mecca for the visual and craft arts. The new Little Thistle Studio, which opened this spring, offers classes such as pottery and embroidery for all ages. The Distillery of Modern Art, a craft spirit company and arts venue, hosts artists exhibitions in its on-site gallery, while Andrew Bloom offers Asian art classes at his fine-art showroom, Blooms Emporium, in Chamblee’s Chinatown.
It’s the kind of art-forward environment that inspired Spruill to choose the city for its next chapter. “Chamblee was one of those up‑and‑coming areas that had just such a good vibe about it and growth,” Mothner says. “It has made [coming here] a no-brainer.”
This article appears in our June 2026 issue.
