silent auction at the Chop Chop Gallery

A silent art auction will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Chop Chop Gallery, 78 Parsons Ave. For more information visit www.chopchopgallery.com.

You could easily drive down Parsons Avenue without suspecting that you’re whizzing past an innovative gallery.

Inside what looks like a humble storefront (and what used to be a soft-drink bottling company) is a lime-green reception room, which opens to larger spaces — 6,000 square feet in all — that serve as a self-sufficient art factory.

A silk-screen machine occupies one room.

In another, Daniel McKewen sews canvas bicycle-messenger bags.

Elsewhere are strewn supplies for frames and a multitude of art projects. Power tools and lumber, steel and scrap metal — most of it donated or retrieved from trash bins — join the mix.

In a garage with a high ceiling awaits a 30-by-30-foot skateboard ramp. More than 20 overhauled bicycles hang from hooks bolted to the concrete-block walls.

Welcome to the Chop Chop Gallery, opened in June by artists and partners Ashley Puckett, 28, and Craig Dransfield, 33.

The gallery, operated as a loose collective, also makes room for a few full-time artists, who contribute to the monthly rent and sometimes join in the rehabbing.

This week, on Thursday, Chop Chop will host a silent auction of art from 6 to 9 p.m.

Works by about 30 artists from central Ohio and throughout the United States — including photographs, oil paintings, sketches, postcards, T-shirts and messenger bags — will be sold.

“About 98 percent of everything in here is built with recycled stuff,” Dransfield said.

The gallery was born of necessity.

For three years, several artists worked (and occasionally lived) in the Peninsula Building — a warehouse on the Whittier Peninsula near German Village.

Dransfield filled part of the enormous structure with the tools and materials of his various trades: painting, skateboarding, tailoring, silkscreening, carpentry, graphic design and electrical and mechanical work.

He used it as a home base while he traveled the country, painting commissioned murals and building skateboard ramps.

Then, in the fall of 2005, the Columbus fire marshal ruled that the site was zoned only for storage.

Dransfield spent multiple trips hauling all his stuff in a truck to the Parsons Avenue site.

A graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design, he had always entertained the idea of a collective art space.

So he set to work with Puckett, a graduate of Denison University in Granville: They gutted the building, built walls and rewired the place.

By spring, Dransfield and Puckett saw the potential of a working gallery and studio for up-and-coming, contemporary artists.

“In my mind, there are people in Columbus who are doing really interesting things who aren’t getting their stuff out there through regular galleries,” Puckett said.

Three more artists have since sublet space from the two.

Puckett and Dransfield envision Chop Chop not only as a gallery and studio but also as a “hub” for other self-sufficient creators who crisscross the nation.

Two months ago, the artist known as Klutch, an indemand painter and designer who has created works for Nike, spent 10 days there.

“As for the actual gallery space, it was the nicest show I’ve ever had,” Klutch said from Portland, Ore.

“I left there with good memories and a good feeling. I felt like I was hanging out at a punk show rather than a snooty gallery. I can only expect to see that place grow.”

Dransfield and Puckett also want to reach out to young, unestablished artists.

“When I went to CCAD . . . graduates would visit — usually professional illustrators — and tell us, ‘This is what you do when you’re established,’ ” Dransfield recalled. “But there’s nothing more inspiring than actually working with contemporary artists and doing things yourself.”

The economics of the gallery require that the couple keep their day jobs: Puckett waits tables at Betty’s Fine Food & Spirits in the Short North; Dransfield paints murals and does work on cars, bicycles and skateboard ramps.

As for their gallery, they see the status of struggling artists as their biggest asset.

“We’re on the other side,” Dransfield said. “We’re not art dealers; we’re painters and artists ourselves. . . . If you’re an artist, you have to have your first break somehow. Unless you have a space like this, it’s hard to do it.”