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Graham Franciose, owner of Get Nice Gallery at the Ballard Collective, says the fire that destroyed his gallery Friday night started in the dumpster outside the window of his studio. Then it crawled up to the roof and filled the building with thick smoke, rendering every studio inside totally unusable, and displacing more than a dozen local artists.
Franciose’s photos show the aftermath at Get Nice. The roof is caved in. Scorched and splintered timber litters a bed of ash. T-shirts from Ink Knife Press hang wet and sooty on their hangers. Ruined art, blown off the wall by fire houses, mingle with the debris. Franciose says all of his art, all his prints, and all his materials are covered in a burnt layer of rubble, shards of glass, and “sludgey, smoky water.”
“Not much salvageable, it appears,” Franciose wrote in an email to The Stranger. “Kind of hard to get in there to assess everything.”
Calls of a dumpster fire came in around 8:42 p.m. Friday, says the Seattle Fire Department, which sent 55 firefighters, seven engines, and four ladder trucks to the scene. By 9:40 p.m., the fire was out. Investigators ruled the cause of the fire “undetermined,” and estimated a total loss of $70,000.
Get Nice, which is in the heart of downtown Ballard on Market Street, had just finished hanging a show set to open the next day during Ballard ArtWalk. Featured artists Michael Sieben and Travis Millard had arrived from Austin and Kansas City, respectively, hours before the fire. All their work was on paper, much of it unframed, Franciose says.
Franciose’s partner, Lacey Morris, says they’d just come home from dinner when they heard the news. Morris runs her yoga studio, Shala Studio, out of Ballard Collective. It was destroyed, too.
Jyotsna Ambarukhana, with Rose & Orange Studios, says she hasn’t been able to fully survey the damage to her space. It’s unsafe to be in the building for more than a minute or two, even with masks, due to toxic smoke fumes. Stephanie Ames, another artist at Rose & Orange Studios, called the smell “oppressive.”
Smoke damaged two years of paintings at Rachel Wilsey’s second-floor studio and gallery. Smoke remediation of fine art is possible, but Wilsey says she’s in limbo, unsure what is salvageable and what insurance will cover. She doesn’t know if her small creative community can find another affordable space if the building doesn’t reopen.
The Ballard Collective has started a GoFundMe to raise $13,000 to replace equipment, lost materials, and secure temporary spaces for its 14 displaced members “while plans for rebuilding take shape.”
Matt Midgley, artist and co-owner of Gallery ERGO in Pike Place Market, has started a separate fundraiser to raise $45,000 for Franciose and Get Nice. As of blog time, he’s raised more than $35,000.
