On a break during the festival, Sue Bonifacio, Rhoda Keultjes and Stacey Thomas began to chat about a place where they could work themselves and also teach their love of art to others.

The talk turned into reality as their centre for the arts opened Sunday.

Prior to the opening the trio was busy transforming a former office building on Waterloo Street into a space designed to inspire imagination. From the outside, the building is inviting with a huge mural of a country home painted on the entire front of the building. The three artists plan to continue the mural to the side of the building with a scene of the Niagara River.

Inside, each artist has a studio she will work out of. There is also a small office area, a gallery to display their work and an area where supplies will be sold for art classes.

Classes can accommodate up to 14 students at a time and will be held at the back of the building.

"It was our dream to have a studio. We all love the arts and we wanted to teach what we do," said Bonifacio, who turns gourds into paintings, fruit bowls, flower pots, birds, turtles, flowers and pieces of Celtic art.

When she's finished her design, she puts the finishing touches on the piece by coiling the top with baked pine needles and sometimes applying varnish to weather-proof the gourd. She also uses pine needles to coil other forms of art.

Thomas has been painting professionally as well as teaching art to students in her studios for nine years. Stacey opened Woodland Wonders Art Studio in Crystal Beach in 2002. Art classes for adults, children and special needs students have been part of her busy schedule.

Keultjes has been painting with oils for more than 20 years.

"It's a forgiving medium," she said. "You can put it on and take it off and put it on again," she said. "There is no such thing as a mistake in art."

The trio look forward to offering classes to students aged children to senior. With the motto "If you can dream it, you can do it" posted above the entrance, they are well on their way.

"Nobody spends the hours we have spent and don't love it," said Bonifacio.

The gallery is located at 8 Waterloo St., behind Ontario Bakery. For more information, call 905-871-3999.

"This is hopefully the beginning of a wonderful cultural movement in Fort Erie," said Thomas.