PicturedbyDesign | New York Fashion and Architecture

Everything changes, and we change with them.

Today, the painting majors attending Pratt Institute and the artist world in general suffered an immeasurable loss when a fire razed the sixth floor of the main building, fueled by art supplies and paintings from the Senior Thesis Painting studio. All of the artworks on the sixth floor were lost, and artworks in the studios throughout the building, especially within studios on the fifth floor, were likely damaged in various degrees from the fire and the water damage from the effort to put out the fire.

My heart is with those who lost their work, and to all artists who have lost work in various degrees in the past. I also beseech everyone to rather assign blame to whichever parties that may be responsible, to think of the fire not as an end of anything, but as the beginning of something new. For though the hours, days, weeks, months and for some, years of work will never be returned, the works that will never recovered nor will they be ever recreated in their exact fashion – for art cannot be created from a formula – the inspiration, the heart and the drive behind our art and everything that is fundamentally instilled within ourselves, can never be taken away.

Don’t let a fire put out the fire within ourselves. Do not forget that our work is naught but a projection of ourselves, and as we live and breathe, our art will never die.

So go forth and recreate, or start anew in an entirely different direction.

I’m not saying that we should forget, for we never should forget what was. But I am saying that we, especially those that truly despaired at seeing your art go up in flames and feel that a part of yourself is gone forever, should move on and not dwell on the sadder times, and keep propelling ourselves forward.

Tempus fugit. 

I look forward to seeing what this fire brings out of the artists.