Stage fright is the furthest thing from Janet Koike’s mind.

She’s too busy. With three days until a widely publicized opening, Koike, her lead contractor and a small team of construction workers are laying down final coats of paint, completing details and awaiting the delivery of a handrail they’ll have to install along the staircase.

But most of the heavy lifting is done. Koike and her crew entirely rebuilt an old brick factory building on Blanding Avenue and turned the site into Rhythmix Cultural Works, what she and many collaborators hope will become one of the East Bay’s premiere venues for a myriad of art genres.CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE MOVIE

But the former Clamp Swing Pricing Company building won’t just be a home for the arts; it will also be a home for artists. In addition to classroom, gallery, performance and production space, seven work/live studios will bring the frenetic benign chaos of artistic creation into the often-rarified realm of where art is displayed.

“All these people’s energy is what’s going to make this successful,” Koike said shortly before the first artwork for the inaugural show arrived in the ground floor gallery space.

“We hope to present the artistic diversity of the Bay Area,” she said. The opening events on Saturday will certainly present plenty of that. Photographic prints and book art will be displayed as a globetrotting menu of performances occur.

After the opening festivities, the center will offer classes and performances of Japanese and Brazilian drumming, Polynesian and Brazilian dance, musical theater, storytelling, filmmaking, printmaking and classes in Capoiera, a Brazilian martial art.

“The last six months, the days and nights have run together,” said Bob Bell, one of Koike’s former neighbors, an artist and general contractor on the site. “When we began this, this place had eight foot ceilings and Pepto-Bismol pink walls and all kinds of partitions, “ Bell said, standing in the small theater space with its wooden arched roof.

“We set a course to raise people’s eyes and raise people’s spirits and I think that we have succeeded,” Bell said.

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