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It’s been nine years since arts community activist Bill Kelley moved to Baton Rouge, but he’s really only been living here since 2001. The first three years he merely existed, slogging through a mind-numbing string of 40-hour work weeks at a state agency where he could literally feel the lifeblood draining from his Bohemian veins.

But then Kelley had an awakening, a realization that his creative persona was withering on the vine, and a recognition that he’d better do something about it.

He quit his job, decided to embrace his new city, and embarked on a one-man mission to extract from the marrow of Baton Rouge every artistic and creative impulse he could find in an effort to create a true arts community.

“It’s not just for performing artists or those who create fine arts,” Kelley says of his endeavor. “This is for people who appreciate art or are even just interested in art.”

His endeavor is Culture Candy, and he describes it as a comprehensive plan for growing an arts community from grass roots. It’s essentially a Web-based umbrella organization that has under it several projects, each of which contributes to the development of the fine arts, music, dance, literary and collector communities in the area (culturecandy.org).

Among those projects are an online cultural calendar with a weekly listing of artistic events, downtown’s Art Car Parade and a series of weekly studio and gallery tours. A fundraiser to support budding artists and a program to keep them in the state are in the works as well.

“I don’t know why I’m so driven to the arts,” Kelley says, whose freckled face and boyish demeanor belie his 49 years. “It’s just something I’ve always done.”

Kelley was drawn to the arts at least going back as far as his years in junior high, which were spent outside of Boston where he grew up. He’d help promote local bands that were playing on weekends, even if he had no affiliation with them, and would encourage others to go hear their gigs.

His love of art and music continued through college. He attended the University of Massachusetts and earned degrees in both psychology and music. He also got his MFA in electronic music. Along the way, he met a budding artist from Baton Rouge who would go on to become an accomplished painter and his wife, Kelli Scott Kelley.

For years the couple enjoyed a self-described Bohemian life in a gritty, urban neighborhood in Houston. Then, son Finn was born and Kelli decided she wanted to raise her new baby closer to family. She applied for a teaching position at the LSU School of Art, and when she was hired Bill took a job as Web master for the state Department of Education. It about killed him.

“It was 1998, I was 40 years old, and I was taking my first 40-hour a week job,” he recalls.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was moving from a vibrant city with a thriving, late-night arts scene to a smaller community that rolled up the sidewalks well before midnight, and at the time had very little to offer in the way of arts or an urban experience. Kelley had the culture shock of his life, and it took him a while to come to terms with it.

“After three years, I had lost all of my personality and gotten very depressed,” he recalls.

So he went on vacation and decided to stop wallowing and start creating the artsy community he so craved. He quit his job, took a new one as a recording engineer at the LSU School of Music and began a whole new existence.

He began by seeking out and exploring what Baton Rouge has to offer then by getting to know and appreciate the community. He also began spending more time with local artists and art students, which is where the idea for Culture Candy hatched.

“I was sitting around at a graduate student party talking about all the cool stuff in Houston that I had been involved in, and they asked me why we couldn’t do that here,” he says. “They offered to help do whatever it took to get the ball rolling.”

Kelley started by creating culturecandy.org and building its online calendar, which lists every artistic event going on anywhere in the metro area. It gets about 300 hits a week and is also e-mailed each Wednesday to 1,200 recipients.

His next big project was the Art Car Parade, which in April staged its second-annual run through the streets of downtown. It’s particularly near and dear to Kelley’s heart, as he himself drives a 9-year-old Saturn meticulously covered in knotty pine shelf-liner paper. He’s not sure why. It seems to have something to do with wanting to spread a little creative sunshine in a world filled with the banal and mundane.

“Sometimes I’ll drive through the Wal-Mart parking lot just to get a little boost,” he says. “I’ll hear a kid say, ‘Dad, look at the car,’ and the poor dad who’s been working all day and is down—suddenly his face lights up and he forgets about where he is.”

So is art just about escapism—and is that what drives Kelley to work so hard at trying to foster and promote it? He’s not sure. He knows there are more worthy causes—like helping starving children or kids with terminal illnesses. But he’s already done that. He had a sister with Down’s Syndrome who died at the age of four when he was just 11.

“We had been very close, so growing up people always encouraged me to go into special education or something like that,” he says. “But I didn’t want to have to deal with that again. Maybe I’m just sublimating those emotions, trying to care for peoples’ inner lives by promoting art.”

Whatever the reason, Kelley’s efforts are catching on. He’s attracting attention from local philanthropists, who are eager to support his efforts. He’s considering turning Culture Candy into a nonprofit organization. He’s also widening the circle of people he’s trying to reach.

“He’s always out there meeting people, networking and finding gout about what’s going on,” says Robert Moreland, a local artist whose work Kelley has hyped. “He’s really making it happen. He’s really becoming a pillar of the arts community.”

This spring, Culture Candy launched Looking at Art, a four-week series of Wednesday night tours that featured visits to art studios, galleries and the homes of local collectors, as well as chats with artists. Modeled after a similar program in Houston, Looking at Art was well-received by a group of mostly 50-somethings who were exposed to new artists and whole new ways of creating.

“On the first night we went to Elise Toups’ studio, which is this really cool greenhouse that she has completely redone,” Kelley says.

“She’s very young, about 23, and when our group saw this young woman so vibrant and full of life in a greenhouse-turned-studio, which at night is all lit up, they were just stunned, speechless.”

Kelley plans to continue with a summer series of tours in June. He’s also trying to establish a fundraiser called the Hair Ball to raise money for a program designed to keep artists in the state. As conceived now, the program will pay $5,000 to any graduate art student who agrees to stay in Baton Rouge for one year.

“If we can keep them here for one year, they will be much more likely to stay permanently,” he says.

Which is the whole idea. Kelley is trying to create a synergy that spreads little by little over time. It has become his passion and vocation, and now that he has found his calling he has no intention of turning back.

“I’ve got plans,” he says. “And they all end with me living in a vibrant, creative, inclusive, compassionate, healthy city.”