Denver artist says he lost nearly $700,000 in art, tools after studio fire

DENVER (KDVR) — It was just another Wednesday for Denver artist, Christopher Nelson , as he drove to his art studio in the River North Arts District on July 31.

His studio housed most of his art from when he first started 30 years ago as a kid to the present.

“It’s just kind of in my blood,” Nelson said. “The output has to flow or I just feel completely tense and it has to come out of me one way or another. And as a young kid, I found that — I found that through art.”

From creating crystal sculptures for Meow Wolf in Denver to participating in exhibitions and having his artwork displayed in galleries, his creations have traveled the globe.

“To have been able to do that for a living has been really special and I’ve been very grateful for that and still am very grateful for that,” Nelson said.

But, on a Wednesday when he pulled up to his art studio, the reset button was hit.

“I noticed the boarded-up door,” he said. “That was the first thing that I saw. And I was like, ‘Oh, what happened? Did somebody break my door out?’”

Then, he noticed all the windows on the first floor had been blown out.

“So then I pulled around back here and the door was wide open, which I thought was kind of crazy. And just walked in and saw it like this. Just completely incinerated,” he said.

As he stepped over the broken glass, soot, and insulation that had fallen from the ceiling, realization dawned.

“What hit me the most was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have a place or tools to make a living anymore. I don’t know what I’m going to do’,” he said.

The night before, the Denver Fire Department responded to a fire inside the building. No injuries were reported, and fire investigators are working to determine the cause.

Nelson did some digging of his own, asking neighbors and nearby businesses if they knew what had happened. He said several of them said they thought they had seen someone near the building before the fire broke out.

“I got multiple accounts. One from the security guard at 7-Eleven across the street and another neighbor that said they saw somebody throw something through the window,” he said.

While he admitted he doesn’t have definite proof, either way, it doesn’t change the fact that the fire burned up most of his livelihood in just one night.

“It was 575,000 dollars worth of art. I didn’t even do an inventory on the tools yet but it probably is at least 100,000 dollars worth of tools and equipment,” he said.

Nelson said his insurance will only cover 15,000 of it, so now he is very slowly trying to rebuild.

“I have acquired a couple of tools to finish a couple of jobs that I already had started,” he said. “I’m kind of taking it in stride and not just diving straight back into everything in an effort to make it how it was.”

A friend organized a GoFundMe for him to help him replace some of the tools and get a new studio. In just over two weeks, it has already garnered nearly $10,000.

In the meantime, he said is still going to keep creating and designing, while staying positive. And he is still welcoming any new projects and commissions.

“Every traumatic experience that I’ve gone through in my life has led me to something beautiful on the other side and so I know that that’ll be the case here.”

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