“That day is forever in my memory because the fire went for 36 hours,” said Brooklyn-based artist Lady K, “and the text threads between us all, as we were trying to process it!”
For Lady K, who lost nearly all of her artwork when a five-alarm fire broke out in Red Hook the night of Sept. 17, 2025, joined forces Thursday with fellow artists for a new exhibit “One Year Later: New Work, New Perspectives.”
“To see so much art and people around, enjoying themselves, is really important,” she said, “because so many people had a hard time coming back after the fire. It took me 6-8 months to get me back to having a working space.”
For more than 30 years, the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, or BWAC, held all of its exhibits at the Red Hook warehouse, which was also home to dozens of artists.
Artist Alicia Degener is also the president of BWAC. She said thanks to the generosity of the Whale Building in Sunset Park, which donated the exhibition space, dozens of impacted artists are able to collectively show the public how the fire has influenced their work and their perception of art.
“You can’t just say everything is ruined,” said Degener. “With art, there’s never that definitive answer.”
The exhibit featured many water-damaged watercolors that Degener salvaged from a flat file that was in the building.
“Me and my son pried it with a crowbar and everything was just moldy and soaked, but there is still value in it,” she said. “I want people to see what happened, and then I want to move on. It’s healing for me for people to understand what all of us went through, collectively, cause I’m not the only one who has stuff like this. But then, to move on. We’re making new art!”
While the cause of that blaze in Red Hook remains under investigation, the Red Hook Business Alliance said that when the repairs are complete, it will eventually be built out into usable space.
Anyone interested in seeing the exhibit, it will be open to the public, mostly on weekends, through Oct. 18.