Inhale it as a tonic: The upbeat atmosphere and the passionate people who conjure it, at the Youth Arts Collective in their new digs at 472 Calle Principal in Old Monterey. This Saturday, YAC celebrates its eighth birthday with an open house, art exhibition, silent auction… and cake.

In their old rabbit warren of a space near Stokes Restaurant, the atmosphere was bottled pretty tightly, but there, artists Marcia Perry and Meg Biddle created and for eight years ran a high-impact after-school studio art program that mentored 225 young people. About 40 percent attended on scholarship. Many were referred by art teachers, some by police, some by therapists. Some had learning disabilities. Ninety-five percent went on to college, and many won scholarships with YAC’s help.

“They are highly motivated young people,” Biddle says.

Young Natalie Fitts is wielding scissors expressively, snipping a young man from shaggy to Byronic while both of them carry on a spirited conversation to the beat of world music. “I’ve gone international since I joined,” she explained. Hair design is just one of Fitts’ art forms; she usually paints with acrylics.

“YAC has exposed me to other musical tastes. It’s just one way it has expanded my horizon: It’s a collaboration of different opinions and styles,” she says. Her subject doesn’t flinch as his dark curls fall to the floor. “I’m really good at this,” says Fitts, starting on his crown, “so I thought I’d do it here.”

“Here” is a nook she carved in the chasm of the new 2,000-square-footish studios. It’s an industrial-looking space, with large pillars and massive aluminum ducts sculpting high ceilings. Heavy bookshelves and tables carve out work areas for small sculpture, painting and digital art. An airbrush room already is deeply pigmented. A large gallery/office offers a wide, welcoming storefront view to passers-by. Soon there’ll be a video production area. YAC now can serve more students, stimulate more interaction among students and art forms, and perhaps lease the facility for workshops by other arts groups. The new location releases the genie from the bottle.

“With this and our new, active board, Meg and I can spend all of our time with the kids and finally YAC will be sustainable,” Perry says.

An imposing Abbie Haügh dominates a large table where three young men are drawing. Standing, Haügh uses a T-square for precision as he cuts a template for elaborate lettering filling the top of a large sheet of paper. He’s doing a concert poster for a local band that likes his cartoon characters. 

“I knew I wanted to do comics when I was 14. Now I have tons of characters and eight or nine long stories of a hundred or so pages each,” he says.

Inspired by R. Crumb and others, Haügh’s distinctive drawings are full of detail, his characters expressive. “YAC has all the tools I need,” he says. “Meg helps a lot, since she’s an illustrator, and Marcia helps me with the color. But the best thing is that I make up my characters based on people I see…and there’s a lot of good material here.”

At the corner of another table, a young woman is hunched over a small watercolor, rendering a vivid, Turneresque cloud with confidence. Santoshi Lama is from Nepal.

“I’ve been learning to paint since I was born,” Lama says, smiling. Studying with YAC for the past three years, she is trying for a new twist on the technique she practiced as a child in Nepal, painting mandalas – her family’s business.

“I just can’t find the watercolors we used, so I am trying to do something different,” Lama says. The vivid cloud is one of many small elegant works that fit together in an elaborate puzzle that will become a different kind of mandala.

“When I began here I had said to Marcia and Meg that I wanted to be a cartoon animator,” she says. “Now we’re working on getting me a scholarship to study that. It’s very expensive. So I spend a lot of time here, and I’m very happy about it. Everyone creates something new. The atmosphere is very inspiring.”

Diandre Fuentes is set up in a corner of the studio, applying a greenish cast to a wry psychological portrait, one of a series already hanging on the gallery walls. Currently attending York School, Fuentes has big plans.

“I want a career that fuses art with academics, I want to work for social justice. And travel. I’m applying to several UC campuses, but my goal is to be one of the first students of the combined Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design dual degree program. They’re only taking 30 students, so I know it’ll be tough. But YAC has taught me what I need to make it.

“The only kind of person you have to be is dedicated to the work,” she says.

THE YOUTH ARTS COLLECTIVE Birthday and Open House happens from 2-5pm Saturday, Jan. 26, at 472 Calle Principal, Monterey. Free. Call 375-9922 or check yacstudios.org.