Ballard fire at arts hub leaves $70K in damage, displaces artists

When Jyotsna Ambarukhana left the Ballard Collective on Friday evening after setting up for a Saturday art show, she had no way of knowing disaster was on its way.

Ambarukhana, founder and co-curator of an art gallery within the collective, had stayed until around 8:30 p.m. preparing. But Saturday’s show never happened.

Soon after she left, Ambarukhana’s phone was inundated with news that a fire had broken out in the building, she said. The space is home to studios, galleries and workspaces of the Ballard Collective’s 15 artists and wellness practitioners.

“It was just heartbreaking and horrifying,” Ambarukhana said.

The blaze started as a dumpster fire, then spread to the building, according to the Seattle Fire Department. The fire brought an estimated $70,000 worth of damages, according to the department. It has forced the collective’s members out of their workspaces, and left a disastrous scene where the bustling creative hub once stood.

Building manager Daniel deWolff — also an artist in the collective — said another fire burned the building in late 2019, before the Ballard Collective started in 2020.

No one was in the building during the Friday evening fire, the Seattle Fire Department said. About 55 firefighters responded, and the blaze was extinguished by 9:40 p.m.

Fire investigators on Monday said the cause was undetermined. The fire department’s ruling could change if more information comes up, according to the department.

By Monday evening, an Arson Alarm Foundation poster was up on the boarded-up back of the building, claiming the fire was arson, Ambarukhana said. The poster highlights a $10,000 award fund, which the foundation pulls from to reward people who share information about fires they are investigating. The nonprofit foundation focuses on public awareness, community engagement and awards to fight arson, and works with agencies like the U.S. Fire Administration.

The foundation’s posters were “posted at the site to ask the community to provide any witness reports or video evidence they may have to help us gather more information for the investigation,” Fire Department spokesperson Kristin Hanson wrote in an email.

When Ambarukhana returned to the collective Monday morning, entering the building with a mask, the smoke was so bad her eyes watered and her head hurt. The back of the building has been completely gutted, and the front was overrun with smoke, she said.

Lacey Morris, a registered yoga teacher with a studio in the space, said seeing the damage on Saturday morning was overwhelming.

“Just tears and anger, I guess — feeling angry that someone could be so careless,” Morris said.

She and Graham Franciose have studios in the back of the building, where members said the fire hit hardest. Franciose, who owns the Get Nice. Gallery, said almost everything in his studio is soaked and covered in rubble, while the work in his adjacent gallery is water- and smoke-damaged.

His inventory of prints — a big source of income — is gone. Even sketchbooks dating back to his college days were soaked.

“It’s kind of this sense of, I have to start from scratch, I guess,” he said.

Adding to their troubles, two visiting artists were slotted to show their work at Franciose’s gallery the day after the fire broke out. Much of their work has been destroyed in the blaze, Franciose said.

Rachel Wilsey, another one of the building’s artists, said direct flame and water damage didn’t reach her studio, but smoke — which spread throughout the building — has devastated the space. She had two years of paintings there.

“All my back work, all my supplies, everything that I use to work every day is there,” she said.

In the days since the fire, the Ballard Collective has started a GoFundMe to help its members rebuild. There’s also a GoFundMe for Franciose’s Get Nice. Gallery.

The funds will help the artists and wellness practitioners find a temporary studio space, since they’re not sure if or when they will be able to return to the building, Ambarukhana said.

“It’s only been three days,” she said. “We haven’t even really processed the loss yet.”

As collective members deal with the fire’s fallout, Morris, the yoga teacher, said she’s “feeling grateful for everyone’s support in our community.”

Franciose echoed the sentiment, and reflected on the significance of two works hanging in his space during the fire. Before finding them in the rubble of the fire’s aftermath, he had planned for them to show in a Philadelphia gallery next month.

One, called “A Time to Let Go,” is a person releasing a bird into the air. The other is a woman surrounded by tree stumps, holding a sprouting seed in her hand.

It’s titled “Begin Again.”