For a Maine artist, Tuesday’s fire on Valley Street in Portland was a moment of darkness in an otherwise colorful career.
Artist Zoo Cain is trying to salvage as much of his work as he can, after the fire at his gallery and studio on Valley Street.
Cain, the subject of an award-winning documentary, was at the movies when his daughter came to get him and bring him to the fire scene.
“We got up here, there must have been at least 100 firefighters,” Cain said. “I finally got here to the Greyhound parking lot. I almost collapsed when I saw what had happened. You know, the place was pretty much in flames.”
While most things in life can be replaced, original artwork is tough to lose.
“Decades of work,” Cain said. “A lot of it. I had a beautiful masterpiece in there I’ll never see again, it burned to a crisp. But I saved a lot of masterpieces.”
Cain told the Portland Press Herald that although he lost more than 100 pieces of art, he has thousands of others in other locations throughout Greater Portland and that he’s thankful no tenants were seriously injured in a blaze that displaced 10 people.
And though one cat died in the fire, another tenant was able to save some of her pet fish.
The hardest thing now will be losing the community in this building.
Landlord Bob Jordan says he’s tried to make this an affordable space for creative tenants, since he bought the building in 1984.
“It’s totally the end of a community and that’s what’s really so sad. That’s a loss that we can’t really recover from. And that’s, that’s what so sad,” Jordan said. “I know for this building, an era has ended.”
The landlord, a veteran, says he is insured, but is not sure what will happen with the building. He and the tenants say they are grateful for the efforts of police and firefighters.
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