How do you fix a neighborhood? What do you do about crime and drugs and the once-lovely old houses that are falling down? The answer in Paducah, Ky., was to turn it into a special place for artists to live, work and sell. Paducah, already home to the National Quilt Museum, is far west on the edge of Kentucky, on the Ohio River. Lowertown, so-named for being downriver from downtown Paducah, was once quite elegant — 25 square blocks. But in time it became a difficult place to admire. Bill and Patience Renzulli came to Paducah from Maryland for the first time in 2001 after seeing an ad in an art magazine for the neighborhood's Artist Relocation Program. At first glance, Bill says the scene of the neighborhood was awful. "But I don't know... I felt something," he says. "There was a spark and I thought that something good could happen." On their visit, The Renzullis were dismayed by condemned buildings, grand Victorian homes chopped up into apartments, drug use, crack sales and prostitution
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