Fire consumed a warehouse on Jarvis Avenue in Winnipeg's North End on Monday. (photo from City of Winnipeg)
Winnipeg's arts community is reeling after a July 22 inferno destroyed a North End warehouse with numerous studios, including some for the city's best-known artists.
"It's catastrophic for all of us," Keith Oliver, who creates custom furniture, told the CBC. "Some of us lost our livelihoods.
"Some people actually lost 40 years' worth of artwork, so their entire inventory, all of their work. It's all gone up in smoke and ashes."
An image of the building from Google Street View in 2018. (Google Street View)
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, who have toured and performed worldwide, worked in the building, a former mattress factory at 274 Jarvis Ave.
"We're at a stage in our lives where we might hope for a retrospective of all of our work," Dempsey told the CBC. "Well, that can't happen now because the work is gone."
A GoFundMe campaign to help artists re-establish their practices has been launched by Border Crossings magazine in partnership with the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.
"The loss is so profound and the implications of the loss, to the individual artists, is so overwhelming as to be almost unspeakable," Border Crossings editor Meeka Walsh told CBC.
The cause of the blaze is not yet known.
Source: CBC News