Kevin McCormack points to an image of a phoenix hanging on the gallery wall. The phoenix’s body, rendered in flowing aqua-blue linework, seems alive with motion against an orange-yellow background. This is actually a recreation of the original, McCormack explained.
The original “Phoenix Rising” color drawing once sat on a bookcase in his former Superior home, which was destroyed during the 2021 Marshall Fire. On the day of the fire, McCormack and his partner happened to be looking at the artwork — a mythical bird known for rising from its own ashes — when they realized their house had caught fire, forcing them to flee. Grateful to make it out alive, their home was a total loss, like more than a thousand others, along with McCormack’s entire physical archive of art.
“When I moved here to Colorado, I brought the accumulation of decades of original artwork, of paintings and drawings of various scales and styles, from my youth until my most contemporary work,” McCormack said. “When the Marshall fire occurred, all of that work was destroyed.”
But now, his art is being reborn from its ashes. McCormack has found a way to rebuild a portion of his collection using digital files he saved on his computer. These files are now reimagined versions of his originals, allowing him to resurrect past work while incorporating new elements and ideas. Three years out from the wildfire, McCormack’s reconstructed pieces have found a new home at Arts Off Center, a gallery and artist collective in Superior that opened in late November.
McCormack recalls the chaotic morning of the fire, when fierce winds rapidly escalated the danger, forcing him and his partner into an emergency evacuation. Afterward, they lived in several temporary places, including The Armory in North Boulder in spring 2022. It was there that McCormack got the idea to revive his lost art.
“It was a catastrophic loss, but the thing was, how do you respond to that? And what do you do with that?” McCormack said. “My life’s work was to make art, always.”
He had escaped the fire with his computer, which contained scans of much of his artwork. Sitting in a small backroom at The Armory, McCormack began combing through the files. He decided to print the images so that he would have their “presence again,” he said, “so that I could reclaim my art.”
There was no specific trigger that led him to this moment but rather determination. “When you have a craft or something where you can express yourself, it’s a focus, it’s a release,” he said. “It’s like breathing.”
But he didn’t want to simply print his past works as they were. McCormack wanted the revived work to reflect how his creativity had shifted since the 2021 fire. He also felt it wouldn’t realistically capture the texture of a painting or the scale of his larger works with these iterations. So he printed them on materials like canvas, glass and brushed aluminum. He used digital tools to change the coloring and scale of a piece, or invert an image to create a sort of negative of the original art.
To date, McCormack estimates that he’s recreated hundreds of pieces lost in the fire. A selection of these works is now on display at Arts Off Center through at least early March.
Sherry Smith, co-founder of Arts Off Center, said the gallery was created to showcase the talent of artists from Superior and nearby communities. Open since late November, it will hold an official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Jan. 18.
“We were trying to promote local art because there’s a lot of talent locally,” said Smith, who creates pottery and colored pencil drawings. “We don’t have to go into Boulder, we’ve got our little community.”
When they took over the store in Superior Marketplace, Smith said it still bore scars from the Marshall Fire. “When we got in, there was soot all around the doorways where it had come in through the cracks… and the floors were grey. It just was a horrible reminder,” she said.
Smith and her colleague have since removed any remnants of the fire. They transformed the space, repainting the walls in bright, joyous colors and filling it with natural light. They added a cozy area for tea at the back.
McCormack is one of eight artists currently exhibiting at Arts Off Center. For him, the opportunity to display an array of his restored works in a space that has also undergone its own restorative process feels significant.
“There’s a conversation among the pieces,” he said, reflecting on their shared journey through destruction and renewal.
