During these stays, students and the public are exposed to some of the art world's more daring expressions, including robotics, digital video and installations. Charles Krafft, for instance, who arrived this spring, has built an international reputation for his “Disasterware,” porcelain casts of grenades and AK-47s that have been painted and glazed in the Delft tradition.

Advice for the student artists also is readily available across the promenade in the Santora Building, which houses studios and galleries, one of which has shown the photorealistic paintings of Emigdio Vasquez, an alumus who looks to Mexican-American culture for his subjects.

All of this — these visiting artists, the concept of a university live/work facility redeeming a distressed cityscape, gallery shows that can draw thousands of viewers, and the growing acclaim earned by Cal State Fullerton's fine arts graduates — is generating wide interest from cities and universities that want to duplicate this success and from dozens of journalists who want to chronicle it.

These guests might peer over the shoulder of Cara Nilsen as she illustrates a narrative in the tradition of N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish and other practitioners from the Golden Age of Illustration that spanned from 1880 to the 1920s. If they ask her about living and working in the center, she might tell them that “when I can't think of ideas, there are five people who will offer them.”

Customized according to a group's interests, tours usually include a look inside the 87-seat, black-box theater, which presents a spectrum-ranging fare: Aristophanes' “Women in Congress,” a steel-drum trio, a bluesman evoking hardship on the Mississippi Delta and the Preeminents, the university's musical theatre group known for “100 Years of Broadway.”

Visitors also might chance upon junior and senior high school youth learning about Web design and animation at computer workstations during free classes that are conducted as part of the center's growing community-outreach efforts.

These hundred tours a year have elicited accolades. Juxtapoz, one of the nation's leading art magazines, reported that the Artists Village is “one of the most exciting art centers in Southern California” and Grand Central “is the hub of Orange County's artistic education and production.” The writer praised the center for presenting shows by such luminaries as Robert Williams and concluded by calling the village “a place to watch and a place to be.”

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Donald Van Hook, assistant director of the art center, oversees the rental and sales gallery, which often features the work of students and alumni. That gallery is one of several stops along the route for the 175 groups a year that are led on tours of the facility by Van Hook and other Cal State Fullerton representatives. Such tours can be arranged through a phone call to Andrea Harris at (714) 567-7234. For general information, call (714) 56707