GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

     The Somerville Arts Council has only two full-time staffers. (The neighboring Cambridge Arts Council has six.) And in a city where the mayor boasts about the second-highest number of artists per capita in the United States, behind only New York, there are fewer than five galleries where artists can show and sell their work. (Cambridge claims more than 25.)
     So Somerville Arts Council executive director Gregory Jenkins and program manager Rachel Strutt have become, well, creative.
     Strutt says she signed up a Brazilian band to play at last month's ArtBeat, the council's biggest one-day showcase of the year, and she got one of the band members to translate a promotional sign into Portuguese. ''I went around and put up the posters in all these Brazilian grocery stores," she says. Her aim is to show the community ''we're making the effort to include them."
     For the past three years, Jenkins, who was program director for the Boston-based Arts in Progress program for urban youths, and Strutt, a former managing editor for Improper Bostonian magazine, have focused on expanding the programs they inherited from their predecessors, while trying to implement new ones.
     Former executive director Cecily Miller says she is pleased with the work by Jenkins and Strutt.
     ''I think they're doing a wonderful job with very limited resources . . . it's a tough time to be doing arts programming," she says.
     One of the goals of the council is to create more display spaces through festivals and exhibits. Founded in 1980, the council was also established to give support to local artists and bring culture to youth and families who typically have little access to the arts. It is funded in part by the City of Somerville and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, but most of the support comes from fund-raising.
     ''To toot Greg's horn for him," says Strutt, ''he goes door to door, visiting businesses for funding."
     Jenkins says one of his biggest annual challenges is finding support for ArtBeat, a celebration of performing artists that brings some 10,000 people to Davis Square each summer.
     ''If it weren't for all the partners, we wouldn't be able to do it," Jenkins says, giving a nod to the local businesses that help defray the cost.
     Strutt says the partners are only part of the equation: ''We can also do it because Somerville has a tremendous volunteering spirit and we line up so many volunteers. We also have a very hard-working board, and we're very lucky to have three killer interns."
     Another critical player is Arts Council part-time office manager Chris Nau. A painter who moved from Fort Point in Boston to get a space at Vernon Street Studios, Nau works fewer than 20 hours a week for the council.
     But there are serious obstacles facing the arts community. Some of the few who run galleries in Somerville complain about lack of demand. Kate Ledogar, a painter who runs 108 Gallery in Somerville, says that, after a year and a half, she is closing her operations as soon as she finds someone to take her place, because Somervillians don't spend a lot of money on art.
     She says she took a piece of art that she was unable to sell for $400 here to a gallery on Long Island, where it sold for three times that amount. ''If you're an artist running a gallery, you're a little bit at odds, because you want to support artists, but you have to take enough of a cut to support yourself, and even if you're taking 50 percent commission on sales, which is a standard commission, it means the artist is only getting half," she says.
     Still, there are flickers of hope on the horizon, with the new galleries Willoughby & Baltic Studio in Davis Square and the Nave Gallery in the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church. And with the Armory building on Highland Avenue being purchased by arts supporters Joseph and Nabil Sater, there is even talk of an arts center opening.
     The council also helps combat the threat of local gallery extinction with the annual Windows Art Project, which is returning to Union Square this September for the second year in a row. The initiative displays art on storefront windows and outdoor locales.
     ''People like these programs, and we like them and want to keep them going, but it's sometimes frustrating when we can't start new programs of our own, because we simply don't have the time," she says.
     Jenkins says that he has not been able to put together as many new initiatives as he would like, but the arts council has taken some liberties with the existing programs, and Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone seems to like the results. ''It's not necessarily how many people you have, it's what you produce that counts," says Curtatone.
     Part of this effort to reach out to other communities includes the Art Without Walls initiative, which brings free arts activities to local teens. The Mystic River Mural Project has been a successful program in this initiative, allowing teen participants to create an ongoing painting on Mystic Avenue that is more than 150 feet long and growing.
     ''I think the thing about the council that's good is the diversity of programming, the diversity of funding, and the diversity of the community," Jenkins says.
     Strutt is optimistic. ''Right now, it seems we're coming out of economic hard times, and if things ever get strong economically again, it would be great to get more support," she says. ''Right now, we do the best with what we have, but if we did have more staff or money, we could do that much more."