Pink Hook’s artist group isn’t any stranger to life-altering disasters.
In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy’s deluge left the coastal Brooklyn enclave 5 toes underwater and with out energy for weeks, artists held profit exhibitions of storm-damaged work. In its aftermath, a number of artists established an open studios occasion to rejoice their resilience.
Final month, weeks earlier than the occasion’s tenth anniversary version, a five-alarm hearth ripped by a historic Nineteenth-century warehouse, ravaging tons of of artist studios and companies. Some artists, whose studios have been positioned within the bay the place the hearth began, misplaced a long time of labor. Others hoped their works might be saved from mould that had grown within the weeks after firefighters doused the constructing’s roof with seawater.
Group members scrambled to launch on-line fundraisers and relocated among the artists displaced by the hearth. However there was by no means any doubt the occasion would transfer ahead.
“I never thought of not having it, not for a minute,” Deborah Ugoretz, who co-founded Pink Hook Open Studios, advised Hyperallergic. “We have over 40 other studios open and a sculpture garden to celebrate our anniversary.”
Pink Hook Open Studios co-founder Deborah Ugoretz in her studio
Facade of the burned Van Brunt Road property
This weekend, October 11 and 12, crowds of artwork revelers brushed apart the soggy climate and threats of an offshore nor’easter to go to artwork areas beneath the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
A lot of the burned Van Brunt Road property, which had served as an Open Studios hub in earlier years, has remained closed to the general public whereas the hearth division carried out its investigation into the reason for the blaze. In its absence, members of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition and Sizzling Wooden Arts created a short lived exhibition with works by 50 artists at Swan Membership, a brand new yoga studio on the second flooring above Pink Hook Cidery and Steve’s Genuine Key Lime Pie store.
Shingo Wakagi and Mike Ming welcome guests on Saturday, October 11.
The present featured works assembled in folks’s properties and different places, since most of the works at their studios had been destroyed or have been at the moment being handled for mould at Pier 11 by a gaggle of volunteer artwork restorers.
Ethan Cornell, a resident artist with Sizzling Wooden Arts, displayed a big oil portray entitled “Heroes.” He had been working late framing works for a present on the night time the hearth started when he heard squeaks and a popping noise from the carpentry studio above him. At 11:30 pm, he noticed a curl of smoke and yelled “fire!” as he ran out of the constructing.
“It smelled like burning, but not like campfire smoke,” he mentioned. “I had the presence of mind to grab my studio keys and nothing else.”
Elaine Younger’s set up that includes phrases collected whereas doomscrolling through the pandemic.
Carolyn Sheehan introduced three mixed-media works of handmade paper clothes on canvases from her studio in Roscoe, New York, that have been fashions for a bigger work. She feared that she misplaced the full-sized variations she saved in Pink Hook. “Paper dresses don’t do well in fire and water,” she mentioned.
At different neighborhood artwork spots, the hearth was on everybody’s thoughts. Leo Tecosky, a sculptor and glassblower, had moved his studio from Token furnishings, which had a showroom within the Van Brunt Road constructing, into Pier Glass in April. He marveled at his luck after the constructing solely misplaced energy for a number of hours.
Additional down the pier, Elaine Younger’s studio had additionally averted hearth and water injury. The devastation left her “speechless, shocked, and so sad,” she mentioned. Younger had spent a lot of her weekend greeting guests whereas including phrases that had been banned by the Trump administration to black gown shirts she had fabricated in Midtown.
Ian Swordy’s sculpture “The Pearl” (2024) on the open studio occasion’s sculpture backyard
The pageant’s presence helped enhance consideration to the plight of artists effectively past South Brooklyn. Up to now, the Pink Hook Enterprise Alliance, which represents the neighborhood’s companies and unbiased artists, has raised over $186,000 whereas two different arts organizations have every collected about $40,000.
Megan Suttles, Sizzling Wooden Arts founder and co-coordinator of Pink Hook Open Studios, was nonetheless in shock over the dimensions of the destruction. She had misplaced 20 years of artwork within the inferno and not too long ago helped rescue artworks from the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition’s waterlogged exhibition area whereas sporting goggles, gloves, and a hazmat go well with.
“I’m still in a weird place and not accepting what happened,” she mentioned. “It’s so overwhelming. People have asked us to make some drawings, and I don’t even have pencils and paper. All our supplies are gone.”
