After two fires in two years, Trapdoor Projects used the help of friends and volunteers to tear down its fire-challenged gallery in order to build a new one.
“It’s just, it’s validating,” Marion Carrillo told KOB 4 recently. “It’s really validating to have our community turn up to help us with this thing that has been very emotional, and difficult and was incredibly traumatic.”
In order to highlight local artists, Carrillo and his wife Katie Doyle started Trapdoor Projects in 2021 in a barn adjacent to their house. But the gallery soon suffered its first fire, and though it was repaired enough to continue featuring artists, the remnants of the traumatic event remained.
“For months afterward when we’d hear sirens go by, yeah, we tense up and the worst for me was the smell,” Carrillo said. “Anytime if the wind blew wrong, it would carry the smell of burn and char into the house.”
Trapdoor’s website explains the owners’ vision for the gallery:
“Trapdoor Projects is an art space dedicated to showing work from emerging conceptual artists and facilitating creative and critical discourse outside of and after the institution. By offering summer exhibitions, artist talks, and affordable studio space, Trapdoor provides a testing ground for new work, a locus for conversation and improvement of studio practices, and opportunities to connect local and regional artists with one another.”
What was formerly called “the Barn” had been used as a 242-square-foot venue for exhibitions, lectures, performances and critique. Artists enjoyed and learned from other artists. Now a new space will be created, built with some of the usable scraps from the Barn so that artists can enjoy a building they helped create.
“I think our big dreams, like the Barbie Malibu Dream House version of this was really two floors with the gallery on the lower floor, and a small apartment or studio on the top floor,” Doyle told KOB 4.
