Daniel Work recently exhibited his artwork at Roy G Biv gallery in the Short North. It was a homecoming 20 years in the making.

In 1989, Work, then a recent graduate of Columbus College of Art and Design, was among a small group that decided to start a new art gallery in Columbus named Roy G Biv.

“My friend John Chamberlain was the original art director of the gallery, and he had a group of investors together, and they were going to make this gallery happen,” Work said.

After opening the gallery in October of that year, a tragedy befell the group of friends. Chamberlain died in a fire with his brother.

“I came back from the holiday after hearing the tragic news and talked to the investors, and we decided to continue the gallery, to keep it going,” Work said.

At the time, the Short North was just beginning its transformation into an arts district.

“The Short North was definitely not what it is now. There were small pockets of galleries that were up and coming, but for the most part it was pretty shitty and undeveloped. It was a lot sketchier in that area,” Work said.

Roy G Biv’s first location was a former automotive body shop on Lincoln Avenue. It moved to the building currently occupied by Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams soon after opening. It did not move to its current location at 997 N. High St. until 2000. This is around the time Work resigned as gallery director and moved to Portland, Ore.

Work attributes the gallery’s ability to stay open for 20 years to its nonprofit status.

“The gallery originally wasn’t set up as a non-profit gallery, but I came in and told them it should be because it probably wasn’t going to make it as a for-profit business that showed emerging artists,” Work said.

Work helped set up a business model that relied on membership dues, private donations and grants. A board oversees the gallery to make sure it is fulfilling its mission statement while remaining financially solvent.

The current director of the gallery, Justin Luna, said that being non-profit allows Roy G Biv to show work that is experimental and indicative of what is happening in the wider art world.

For the gallery’s current show, artist Matthew Friday drew a chart on a wall. It is accompanied by cups with water samples. The installation illustrates how abandoned coal mines affect Ohio’s water supply.

“It’s work that is not easily commodifiable,” Luna said. “He’s not looking to sell, he is looking to raise awareness.”

Friday’s work would be hard to show at commercial galleries because it cannot be easily sold.

The gallery’s ability to show work of all types is reflected in its name.

“It’s the first letter for every color of the spectrum in the rainbow. … It’s the element of which art is made — color,” Luna said. “And it’s all the colors, all the possible colors, implying that we accept those and everything in between and that our programming is as varied as the spectrum.”

Each year ROY has an open call for artists to exhibit their work. The call is juried by three prominent voices in the Ohio art field. For the 2010 season, the jurors included the Wexner Center’s Senior Curator for Exhibitions, Catharina Manchanda, OSU ceramics professor Mary Jo Boles and art historian Jennifer Bedford.

Roy G Biv’s next show is the annual members’ small work exhibition. It opens Saturday.

“All the artwork will be less than a foot in each dimension,” Luna said. “It’s a fun, eclectic exhibition that shows all types of work. It’s a visual portrait of what our members are making nowadays.”