Artist’s Desire To Stay At Home Site Burns Hotter Than ‘91 Firestorm

Sculptor Richard Warrington lost his log cabin and studio near Marshall to the 1991 firestorm.

The winter after the fire, Warrington, his wife, Frances, and two daughters, Carla, now 18, and Diana, 15, slept in an unheated garage, showered in an even colder camper set over a septic tank, and huddled nights around a propane heater.

Now Warrington has finished rebuilding and is reopening his studio and showroom to the public. He wants people to see his latest works. And he wants to erase the video images of his destroyed studio and home, which television aired repeatedly during the infamous firestorm.

“People would come up to me and say, ‘I know you. You’re that artist whose stuff burned in the firestorm,”’ Warrington said.

Warrington, now 50, also lost 20 years worth of precious possessions - sketches, illustrations and his client list. He says he had two choices: Give up, or rebuild - so he immersed himself in hard work and added some whimsy.

“That’s my nature,” he explained.

When an army of ants erupted from the ground the spring after the fire, Warrington said he visualized a crowd of bustling New York City commuters. He immortalized them in a piece of sculpture called “Five O’Clock People.” The work now resides in a private sculpture garden in Florida.

“If it wasn’t for my art, I would have had a rougher time,” Warrington said.

Both he and Frances, who makes double reeds for bassoons and oboes, didn’t want to uproot the children.

And both agreed it was important to show them “there was a way to come back from these things,” he said.

With his studio and tools destroyed, and uninsured, Warrington couldn’t cut, weld or grind steel, bronze and copper sheets, his primary sculptural materials. So he bought a band saw and cut rounded wooden shapes reminiscent of giant puzzle pieces and painted them in bright school box colors. They sold all over the world, he said.

When he wasn’t creating, Warrington used a tractor to peel away charred earth and clear the “burnt stumps and downed trees,” he said. Warrington, who lives on a seven-acre tract, had to relandscape his entire property. Many of his neighbors did the same. The area in which he lives, three miles southeast of Marshall, is a patchwork of five- and 10-acre lots. He slowly rebuilt his studio and his home, which was insured.

Only those with strong personalities made it through the ordeal, he said. Warrington noted that one neighbor “never rebuilt his huge $300,000 house.” For a few months the man lived in a double-wide trailer, Warrington said. Then one day he left.

“He never recovered from the emotional knockout,” Warrington said.

Warrington said he almost walked away, too. The day the firestorm hit he was driving home from the Mead area after working at a friend’s studio.

“All I could see was smoke billowing from my place. The first thing I did was call my wife in Spokane to say everything is gone - ‘Maybe it’s time to move to Arizona.’

“Nothing was left. Every piece of equipment in that shop (studio) was gone. We didn’t even have a toothbrush. The only things left were a section of fence and a two burning bicycles.”

Warrington received a $10,000 grant from the Gottleff Foundation in New York to help rebuild his studio. But mostly he made sculpture, sold it, and poured the money into the reconstruction. i

Things seem better now as Warrington sits in the new home - larger and grander than his original log cabin - considering requests for his work from galleries in Florida, California, Illinois and Priest Lake, Idaho.

It’s hard to imagine how much Warrington lost. Except that debt remains. And that he collapsed from exhaustion in 1993. But sale of one piece of sculpture to a Paris collector for $70,000 allowed him to work at a slower pace the following year.

“I lost too much to say I got everything back,” he said.

Each year since the burn, the land has changed around him. The first year the earth stayed black, he said. The second year, weeds sprang up. The third year Warrington replaced the burned trees with small leaf willows, which pose less of a fire hazard than the dry needles shed by conifers.

“This year the birds have come back - bluebirds, yellow finches and chickadees,” Warrington said.

His studio is full of fountains he has created. Water spills over aluminum birds, trees and birdhouses into stone-filled basins.

Warrington said he made the right decision by staying even though the fire briefly robbed him of his “center.”

“You have to know how to get that back,” he said. “I knew what I had to do. My family were pioneers. They homesteaded in Cheney. We’re all self-starters. I know what work is.

“I lived in Los Angeles and New York. The changes of the seasons here inspire me. I get most of my ideas in the spring and fall. Those things have an effect on me.”

And Warrington can ship his work anywhere in the world. So he stayed.

“I like it out here. It’s all trees. You can hear the quiet at night.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: GALLERY HOURS Richard Warrington’s gallery on Washington Road near Marshall is open to the public Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Those who would like to watch the artist at work can make arrangements to visit the studio during the week by calling 448-8713.