Fire gutted a DeKalb art studio. Creatives are now picking up the pieces.
Warped steel, charred mixed-media materials and a biting soot smell are all that remain in many parts of a DeKalb County art studio.
In the chaos of it all, artists moved through the large warehouse Friday with a sort of calmness as they salvaged parts of their livelihood. Many of them were still in shock but considering how they would move forward with their sculpture, metal fabrication, digital art, painting and custom jewelry businesses.
A Wednesday blaze at South River Art Studios ravaged one of three warehouses on the property where about 35 artists create and store all their supplies. The studio is off Constitution Road at the end of Fleetwood Drive. Past the train tracks, the road turns to dirt and a large warehouse comes into view.
From the front, it might not be obvious that a fire has stolen everything. But a quick peek inside reveals ash covering every surface. The back of the warehouse, where metal and wood workshops were housed, was hit the hardest, causing drywall to crumble and exposing the bare bones of the building.
“The things that are in the room are just objects, but the people who are affected is really where the heartbreak is,” studio owner and sculptor Phil Proctor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution while looking into a charred space.
“All these people had so much invested. A lot of people had their livelihoods here and they don’t have anywhere to work. Even the parts of the building that didn’t burn had to be evacuated.”
Proctor bought the space with his wife in 2018 out of necessity for his own large sculptures, which are displayed in the Buckhead Plaza, outside the Arthur M. Blank Family Animal Center in Atlanta and Abernathy Greenway Park in Sandy Springs.
The property was far too large for just the two of them. They started the business and opened it up to artists in hopes of creating a place where they could plant their feet. Proctor’s studio space is in an adjacent warehouse that was not impacted by the fire.
Digital sculptor and painter Hannah Hendricks has been at South River for just over a year. She estimates that she’s lost about half of her electronics, including computers and monitors, and at least one entire project she had been working on for the past year.
Eddie Farr also works with electronics and specializes in large-scale data-driven art using light. Each of his displays requires its own computer, which he buys over time and at cheap rates by sourcing older parts and models. Much of his stock has been lost, including various programs he has written and stored in hard drives.
Hendricks’ and Farr’s materials weren’t burned but still suffered severe smoke and water damage.
“At the end of the day, we just want to see South River rebuilt and back up to where it was,” Hendricks said.
The two, along with many of their colleagues, found out about Wednesday’s fire through a string of phone calls and emails. Fire crews responded to the area around 4:30 a.m., but it was only a couple of hours later that those who used the space found out. They all began to rush over as the sun rose and then stared as smoke billowed and water continued to be dumped into the building.
Even while watching fire crews work, welder Ryan Durrett said he didn’t expect so much destruction. His was one of the studios hit the worst, with nearly all of his tools and materials considered total losses.
“I’ve never actually experienced anything, seen anything in real life this devastating,” Durrett said.
Friday, only a few items, including some worktables, hand tools and an anvil, were saved and dragged just outside the bay doors of his studio.
He had been at South River for about five years. His art — metal stair railings, tables, countertops, vent hoods, business signs and sculptures — is his only source of income. He’s got projects still lined up, but said he’ll have to buy new tools and materials for many of them.
His studio neighbor, sculptor Jonathan Imafidor, was hit just as hard.
Imafidor said he usually works overnight since he watches his 4-year-old son during the day while his wife works. But the night of the fire, he wasn’t at the studio. Now he asks himself: could I have saved the space?
When the fire ignited, he was nearly finished with a sculpture of a man made of scrap metal sourced from African and African American business owners and private citizens that was meant to be installed at Freedom Park in Atlanta for a year this past week. The installation will still move forward, though it might be delayed, he said.
The sculpture, which is called “Rebirth,” is visibly different now. What were once smooth and brightly colored pieces of metal are now mostly silver and rusted. But the sculpture itself is still standing.
He was working on another bronze sculpture for a different Atlanta park. A clay model of it was destroyed in the fire.
“The creativity is still there. I’ll be able to bounce back and create stuff. It’s just a temporary setback,” Imafidor said from outside his studio.
For jewelry maker and goldsmith Charlotte Hodges, the setback is more minor. The sparkly pink walls in her studio are still intact, though some water and soot stains have slightly faded the bright pink paint.
Sensitive tools such as a highly calibrated microscope, engraving machine and air compressor were lost. But most of her jewelry remains. She explained that some sensitive gemstones and metals have been damaged and corroded.
“I was lucky compared to a lot of the people here, everything inside my studio was still in my studio when I went in there. What happened in my studio that really wrecked my stuff is that there was a lot of heat and smoke in there,” she said.
She is one of a few who may be able to continue their craft while the studio stays shuttered.
And rebuilding is still unclear for owner Proctor. He said his main focus now is helping artists get into a position to resume work.
On the property are two other smaller warehouses that some artists are considering temporarily sharing. Julia Hill is a sculptor, but her studio is now also partly a quilting shop after she moved in salvaged materials belonging to a friend who has been out of town.
Hill had also recently gotten a shipment of about 40 stacks of solid wood pallets for an art installation. Only six remain after the rest were used by various artists to help remove materials from the charred studios.
“There’s a lot of unknowns about what comes next,” Hill said.
Several GoFundMe campaigns have been created by artists. They can be found on the South River Art Studios website.
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