A fire broke out at an arts and crafts studio in Kings Mountain on Monday evening.
Southern Arts Society director Jewel Reavis said she was doing paperwork just after 7:30 p.m. when she noticed flames coming out of the window of the Train Track Pottery Shack, a structure on the property at 301 N. Piedmont Ave.
“The structure is salvageable, but it’s going to have to be completely gutted,” Reavis said. “We don’t know what equipment we can save.”
The fire caused extensive damage to the interior.
The Southern Arts Society rents the building for art classes where Renee Matthews is a pottery teacher.
“All student work was destroyed,” Matthews said.
Matthews, who has been teaching for seven years, was grateful to find that her granddaughter’s sculpture had survived the fire. However, Reavis believes most of the items inside cannot be salvaged or replaced.
The art teacher emotionally described how much she enjoyed working with her students and said her heart was sad for them as they will have to find a new home to work on their crafts.
“I love pottery because it’s the most forgiving medium I’ve ever worked with,” Matthews said. “It’s my source of therapy and I enjoy the social aspect with the students. I love them and hate that they don’t have a community studio to go to.
Three fire departments responded to put out the blaze, and the cause of the blaze was still unknown as of Tuesday morning.
“The fire marshal has conducted a preliminary investigation, but we have not yet received the report,” said TJ King, captain of the Kings Mountain Fire Department.
Latrice Williams can be reached at 704-669-3339 and lwilliams6@gannett.com.
