"Night Life" by Diane Patton

Artists Diane Patton and Carol Phillips lost their downtown Roanoke art studio in April when city officials condemned the Campbell Avenue building that housed it.

“I’ve been downtown about 20 years,” Patton said at the time. “I hope I don’t have to leave.”

Patton and Phillips did have to work from their homes for a time, but a surprise turn of good fortune has brought them back downtown, along with several more artists.

And Patton gets to set up shop in the space where she started in 1986 – the former site of Studios in the Square above the 202 Market restaurant. “I’m going full circle,” Patton said.

Phillips also got her start at Studios in the Square. “I’m coming home,” she said of the move.

Though the restaurant has turned part of that third-floor loft space into an additional banquet hall, the small working studios remained intact and vacant. “They literally were just sitting there,” said restaurant spokesman Jo Jo Soprano.

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