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BU Bridge Logo

Week of 30 April 1999

Vol. II, No. 33

Feature Article

SFA fund seeks donations

Fire claims decades of work by eminent faculty printmaker


By Hope Green

April was decidedly the cruelest month in the career of artist Deborah Cornell. An assistant professor in SFA's visual arts division, she has spent the past few weeks salvaging what remains of her life's work after a fire destroyed her studio and nearly everything in it.

Cornell is one of 36 professional artists who rented working space at the Kendall Center for the Arts, a community education facility in Belmont, Mass., that burned down the evening of April 9. The cause of the blaze is still under investigation, but fire officials believe it may have been sparked in an electric power strip. All of the artists suffered significant losses of their work.

At SFA, students showing up in class with bunches of flowers for Cornell and the establishment of a fund drive on her behalf have been bright spots in an otherwise gloomy spring.

"I'm very glad the art community is concerned about this, as is the community at large," she says. "The level of sympathy for all of us has been amazing. As artists, we don't always realize the impact our work has on the public."

The disaster claimed most of the art objects that were stored and displayed inside the three-story brick building, a former schoolhouse. Pieces not reduced to ash were sodden with some of the four million gallons of water used to hose down the embers.

"I had a beautiful studio there," says Cornell, whose work has been exhibited widely in New England, including a show last year at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. "We lost many thousands of dollars worth of tools and supplies, including tools that friends or our teachers or other artists had given us. But at least those can be replaced." All of her sculptures, paintings, original print plates, and print editions from the last three decades are gone, along with her entire library of art books.

A small consolation is that she was able to pull some collages, drawings, and print proofs from the wet rubble. Mildew is the new hazard as she attempts to dry them out. "I'm very concerned about losing them again," she says.

Cornell has taught at SFA part-time, but with increasing frequency, since the early 1980s. As head of the printmaking department, she was one of the main organizers of this year's North American Print Biennial at the 808 Gallery. She also is director, president, and cofounder of the Experimental Etching Studio in Boston and was a 1995 fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. Her husband, Richard, is an SFA associate professor of music.

Studio fires are more common than people think, says SFA exhibitions coordinator Katherine French. "It can happen to any artist," she says, "because they tend to work in places like converted warehouses with faulty wiring, and they use flammable solvents and acetylene torches. It's not like being a writer or musician, whose works are out there and published. In a studio fire you lose all your background."

Stain, a 1998 aquatint by Deborah Cornell.


SFA instructors past and present are haunted by experiences similar to Cornell's. Alfred Leslie, a prominent New York artist currently teaching part-time in the graduate painting program, vividly recalls the night of October 17, 1966, when fire broke out in the lower Manhattan building where he kept all of his work and lived with his wife and baby son.

The family made a narrow escape, but 12 firemen died fighting the blaze. Leslie lost his film studio, paintings, and prints dating back to the 1940s, plus research material for a book. With help from friends and various grants, Leslie was able to construct a record of his portfolio and reclaim his position in the art marketplace.

While he felt extremely fortunate that his family was unharmed in the fire, Leslie went through a lengthy mourning period for his obliterated work. "You're in a certain shock, as with any loss that is consequential," he says. "You recognize what has happened, you live through it, and over the years you gradually let go."

In the early 1970s, Morton Sacks, an SFA professor emeritus, lost "just about everything" in a studio fire in Cambridge. "It's a shattering experience," he says. "After the initial shock wears off, of course, you have to see where you stand in the community of sufferers. As horrible as it was, I knew there were much more horrible things that happen to people. You just start over again. That's all you can do."

Former tenants at the Kendall Center are now trying to find another safe and affordable space to continue their not always lucrative profession. Cornell says that the recent disaster should serve as a wake-up call to those who take for granted that artists will always be living nearby and enriching their communities. "People mistakenly think artists can just make do," she says. "There is a lot of space available, but no one should be in most of it."


Anyone who wants to help Deborah Cornell can make out checks payable to Boston University/Cornell Fire Relief Fund. Donations will be collected at SFA student exhibitions or may be sent to the Visual Arts Division, Boston University School for the Arts, 855 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215.