‘I've been in many ways erased’: Artist on Eaton Fire grief

Written by Amy Ta, produced by Angie Perrin

Camilla Taylor’s “Speaking Unison, Telling Their Own Lies.” Courtesy of the artist and Track 16 Gallery

Grief and Hope is looking to raise $1 million to help local artists and arts workers who lost their studios, work, and livelihoods in the Eaton and Palisades Fires. The Getty, LACMA, MOCA and other local arts organizations have launched a separate $12 million fund with the same aim. 

The recent fires revealed the vulnerability of LA’s art community. The natural disaster threatened The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, but on-site staff were able to safeguard the priceless antiquities.

In contrast, the Eaton Fire decimated two artists’ compounds in Altadena. Zorthian Ranch and John Joyce University had been offering communal living and fostering artists for decades. Now both are almost completely destroyed — losing studios, equipment, and irreplaceable artwork.

Nearby, sculptor and printmaker Camilla Taylor fled their Altadena home with their partner and cats. They returned to find remnants of their sculptures in the rubble.

They tell KCRW that every sculpture, print, drawing, and works in progress are gone. “I will think of a thing, and then remember, oh, that's gone, that was burned. And have to say goodbye to it a second time.”

Taylor has been an artist since high school, and without off-site storage, everything they owned was at their home. 

Since their art creations are their essence, Taylor says, “It really does feel that way — that I've been in many ways erased.” 

What was their evacuation experience? “When I was driving home, I saw the fire, so I saw it just getting bigger and bigger the closer I got to my house. And I ran inside, and I was shocked to find my partner still home, and I yelled, ‘Get in the car. We gotta go.’ He hadn't received an evacuation warning or anything, and so he didn't take it as seriously, and I think evacuated more to humor me in many ways. … We never received an evacuation warning of any kind.”

On Taylor’s Instagram, people can see half a face of a sculpture she made, lying on the scorched ground. 

“I work a lot in ceramics, figurative sculpture. And the heat from the fire just shattered a lot of the sculpture and the building coming down on them. And I've been joking that maybe, in some ways, I'm lucky that my aesthetic is really well suited to apocalypse,” they say. 

Katherine Fleming, president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, has heard many stories along these lines. 

As for how the Getty Villa and Center were able to withstand the flames, she explains that both were designed and built with the knowledge that they were in fire zones. 

She says of the Villa: “It's built of very fire-resistant materials. But then, more recently, the groundskeeping staff compiled what they ironically called a hit list of plants and trees that they wanted to remove from the grounds, because they knew that in a fire, they would be really dangerous. Under normal circumstances, nobody likes the idea of getting rid of trees and plants, but that is what we did. And I really think it was the foresight of our groundskeeping staff that ultimately made the big difference for us. That and unbelievable calm and professionalism on the part of the 16 people who spent the night on the site in the Villa while the fires raged around them.” 

The staff managed flare-ups when no fire trucks were present. 

She adds, “We also were in a surreal situation in which a group of us at the Getty Center had live video feed coming into us from the Getty Villa. So we could see what was happening outside in a way that the people there couldn't. And at moments, we were … informing them of what looked like danger zones, what they should avoid.” 

Fleming is part of the team behind the $12 million relief fund, which she says came together swiftly and organically. 

“One of the things that kept me hopeful or happy, or that was a diversion from just the hell all around us, was that even while the fires were ongoing, we were also all communicating with one another about the need to make sure we had support in place for cultural workers, for the arts community as soon as possible afterward. … The Getty had experience doing something similar in the context of COVID with the LA Arts Recovery Fund. So it really was a no brainer.”

Taylor, who didn’t have business insurance, says they applied for relief funding. “I found it to be a really incredible reaction from the institutions to really support the art makers of Los Angeles and the art workers of Los Angeles, that all of these roles were honored and given importance.”

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