On Wednesday night, September 18th, a massive fire tore through our beloved top floor studios on the Red Hook waterfront in Brooklyn. The blaze began right below us on the 3rd floor and burned for more than 24 hours, with over 250 firefighters working to contain it. Miraculously no one was inside at the time, but our section of the building was incinerated — neither the roof, walls or floors remain.
The most painful is not the loss of our equipment and materials, but the disappearance of projects created with dedication, love, and immeasurable hours of work. Decades of irreplaceable artwork and archives including 2 flat files full of prints and photo negatives spanning more than 15 years, archives from Argentina that traveled with us to New York, sketchbooks, research, and our full artwork storage.
Sharing the studios with us, was artist and musician Mariano Gil, who lost more than 40 years of paintings, drawings and prints, much of it documenting important figures from the city’s jazz scene.
Amid so much grief, it has been comforting to feel surrounded by an enormous amount of affection from our wonderful community of artists and friends. That support has been an important source of strength during this time of uncertainty.
We have set up this GoFundMe with the intention of recovering from this heavy blow and moving forward. While the artworks and personal archives are gone forever, this fundraiser will help us replace essential materials and tools we used daily — such as:
Custom large-format UV exposure unit
Etching press
Large format digital printers
2 laptops and harddrives
Flatfiles and storage systems
Digital and analog cameras and lenses
Digital and analog projectors
Metal and woodworking tools
Photography chemistries and materials
rolls of linen & silk, printmaking and photography papers
Pigments and numerous drawing, painting and papermaking supplies
And so many other things that sustained our practice, which slowly start coming back to mind.
We are profoundly grateful for any support you can offer. With your help, we hope to rebuild our studio practice and continue doing the work we love.
With gratitude,
Claudia & Pedro
Organiser
claudia cortinez
Organiser
Brooklyn, NY