Sculpture Students in Search of Home After CSUN Fire

Efrat Stern had worked for more than a year toward the moment when she would present her first major sculpture to her art class at Cal State Northridge.

The art student had painstakingly created a work she called “Apartment Complex,” in which 22 clay masks were arranged inside a bank of open lockers to depict people living in isolated dwellings.

“It was a social commentary about how we live our lives like masks in a locker,” she said.

All that is left today of Stern’s social statement are the charred remains of the metal lockers. The masks melted in a fire that destroyed CSUN’s Halsted Art Annex and just about everything in the 6,600-square-foot building May 9, the day before Stern’s scheduled class presentation.

“It was devastating to lose that piece,” the Granada Hills resident said. “It was something that was cooking inside me for two years. There’s just too much emotional energy involved to start again.”

Shared Valuable Lessons

Yet Stern says she feels an even deeper sense of loss because the blaze robbed art students of a facility in which they shaped their works and shared valuable lessons on artistic technique.

“The real tragedy would be not being able to continue the techniques I’ve been exploring because the university doesn’t replace the equipment,” said Stern, 40, who only recently devoted her efforts to sculpture after completing a master’s degree in music.

Stern’s attitude is typical of how CSUN sculpture students are adjusting to losses they suffered after fire raged through the annex, causing nearly half a million dollars in damage to the North Campus building and its equipment. Their concern for the future of CSUN’s sculpture facilities seems to outweigh their disappointment over losing carefully styled works of art.

No one was injured in the fire, but many of the nearly 200 students who used the annex each semester had stored their final projects in the building before turning them in for grades in sculpture, bronze casting and beginning design classes.

Instructors had stored works in progress there as well. Indeed, the impact of the fire rippled as far as the Napa Valley, where a major piece commissioned by the California Arts Council from CSUN instructor John Canavier was scheduled to be installed at the Yountville Veterans Hospital beginning June 30.

Now a core of CSUN sculpture students have formed a group called Ashes to Art. They hope to raise funds to help replace some of the lost equipment and pressure university administrators to move quickly to build new facilities.

“We’re terrified it won’t be built,” said art student Linda-le Francolla, summarizing what brought the 20 or so students together to form Ashes to Art.

The group, which has developed a logo that it hopes to emblazon on T-shirts and buttons, has gathered 200 signatures on a petition to present to CSUN School of the Arts Dean Gerard Knieter. The petition asks that Knieter act immediately to press university officials to replace the burned-out structure with a larger, more sturdy building.

Knieter said the sculpture students’ goal of having a new facility built quickly was unrealistic, characterizing their reaction as “real but innocent.” He said he could not promise them much beyond finding smaller facilities where classes could be held temporarily.

Los Angeles Fire Department officials estimated that the fire caused $300,000 in damage to the building, and Knieter said the value of the lost equipment was about $170,000.

Small Tools Rescued

The blaze destroyed everything in the annex save for a set of small tools stowed safely in a tool crib, said Joe Arimitsu, chairman of the Department of Three-Dimensional Design, which includes the sculpture program.

Sculpture student Stephen Klein, 23, of Los Angeles said he will miss having the annex’s equipment--such as band saws and welding torches--at hand, but that it was the annex’s intangible qualities that were most valued.

“A natural classroom developed around beginning students working alongside advanced ones,” Klein said. “It was the process of art and the relationships. I can always create art, but it’s the atmosphere that is important.”

Francolla, a former vice president for a local weapons import-export company who is now pursuing a career as a sculptor, lost three projects that she had worked on all semester.

“There was no energy to cry or scream . . . just shock,” Francolla, 33, said of her reaction when she first saw the annex after the fire, which left the inside of the modular steel structure a ruin of warped metal girders and ash.

Temporary Facility

When it opened in 1969, the Halsted Art Annex was considered a temporary facility. The university’s sculpture faculty and students had been working in it ever since.

CSUN sculpture professor Tom McMillin, who was teaching in the annex the evening the fire broke out and later accompanied state investigators to the site, said flames spread quickly through a layer of insulation installed along the walls to reduce noise.

The material was supposed to be flame-retardant, but dust and other particles that had gathered over the years had rendered it extremely flammable, McMillin said.

“The material burned like a wick or a fuse. It took less than two minutes for the flames to move from one end of the building to the other.

“It got as hot as a ceramic kiln,” said McMillin, who tried to salvage a few sculptures on his way out. “The light fixtures were falling from the ceiling . . . and crashing on the floor.”

Caused by Welding?

City Fire Department officials reported on the day of the fire that it was sparked by someone using welding equipment.

But state fire marshal investigators who visited CSUN the following day blamed it on spontaneous combustion resulting from the mixing of volatile chemicals, McMillin said.

CSUN’s three-dimensional media department has long sought a larger, more permanent building for sculpture classes, like that which the Ashes to Art petition requests.

Sculpture instructor Bob Bassler, who has taught at CSUN since 1964, has drawn up a set of plans for what he and his colleagues believe would be an ideal facility. Bassler estimates it would cost about $1.5 million.

But obtaining money for construction through regular channels can be difficult and time-consuming.

State Self-Insured

Because the state of California is self-insured, there is no specific insurance policy to cover loss of the annex. Instead, the state maintains a pool of money that can be tapped to replace damaged property, officials said.

The chancellor’s office decides the allocation of funds pertaining to the state college system. Then new construction projects must be approved by the state Legislature.

Knieter suggested that Ashes to Art might get quicker results if it lobbied the private sector for funds.

“Maybe they could find an angel somewhere who will come out and say, ‘Here, I want to give you a couple million dollars,’ ” he said.

Ashes to Art plans to pursue both avenues. The group will keep the heat on administrators with the petition, students said. And members plan to attend local art festivals to exhibit their previous works in hopes of cultivating community support.

“It’s time to wipe away the tears and get back to work,” Francolla said.