‘An ode to Altadena’: LA arts community bands together to support fire-ravaged neighborhood

The eclectic neighborhood was devastated by the wildfire last month; galleries and artists are now working to protect its legacy. A charred baby Slinky, a handful of book ash, blackened cowrie shells from a necklace made in Ghana. These are some of the remnants of precious things the artist Kenturah Davis has salvaged from what is left of her Altadena home.

Nearby, there is virtually nothing left of her parents’ home of 40 years. Gone are her mother’s intricately stitched quilts and a trove of paintings and sketches Davis’s father made of Hollywood backlots during his decades of working on television and movie sets.

In the face of such enormous personal loss, the artist and her parents are taking part in efforts to preserve the legacy of Altadena, recording their stories for an audio project organised by the Black Trustee Alliance in collaboration with Frieze Art Fair. “The more I talk to people, the more important it feels to find ways to uplift and sustain the special quality that Altadena has,” Davis says. The artist grew up in the neighbourhood, moving back in 2022 to raise her son there. “It meant everything to give my child the same environment I had growing up,” she says.

Land Memories, as the project is called, is intended as “an ode to Altadena”, says Diane Jean-Mary, the executive director of the Black Trustee Alliance. It will focus on the history of the town as a place where a diverse, creative community has blossomed since the 1960s and 70s when Black families, prevented from buying homes elsewhere in the state, put down roots in the town. As the artist Dominique Moody says in her recording for the archive, it “was one of the few places where African Americans could actually buy a home … These people were really visionaries and made Altadena this rich, vibrant place.”.

Black families have also been disproportionately affected by the deadly Eaton fire. But, as Jean-Mary points out, in California, no one is immune. “Everyone here is affected by some of the implications for climate change on the arts,” she adds. “And, in Los Angeles, arts and entertainment power the entire city. The cultural sector is the economy.”.

There is now a sense of urgency in protecting Altadena’s legacy – the question for many residents is whether to stay and rebuild the community or leave. Within days of the fire, one burned-out plot reportedly sold for $100,000 over the asking price and concerns are growing that developers may move in quickly and price people out. “Oftentimes following these events, people move, and they move quickly,” says Christine Messineo, the director of Americas at Frieze, the celebrated contemporary art fair taking place in four cities worldwide each year. “How the neighbourhood might look in the coming months and years is unpredictable.”.

A collaborative spirit informs most of the community-based projects unfolding across Los Angeles as Frieze opens this week – many of them concerned with supporting those affected by the wildfires. Outside the entrance to the fair, Lauren Halsey has created an “art booth” in collaboration with her fellow Angeleno artist Alake Shilling and students from Bret Harte preparatory middle school in South Central Los Angeles and the Rosebud academy in Altadena, which is among several schools severely damaged or destroyed in the fires.

The booth also flags Halsey’s non-profit organisation Summaeverythang, which provides free, organic produce to residents in her South Central neighbourhood. Next year, she aims to open a $3m community centre on her street designed by the Los Angeles architect Barbara Bestor. It will be “a safe haven, a paradise”, as Halsey calls it, for local students.

Los Angeles’ artists are at the heart of several initiatives to aid the cultural recovery of the city. Three top museums – the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles – are establishing a joint acquisition fund of $75,000 to support local artists showing at Frieze. “It’s unprecedented for three museums in the same city to come together like this,” Messineo says. The initiative has been spearheaded by the local venture capital investor and collector Jarl Mohn.

This and the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund are testament to the “strikingly collaborative community” in Los Angeles, says Katherine E Fleming, the president and chief executive of the J Paul Getty Trust, which operates LA’s Getty Center and Getty Villa museums. The trust launched the emergency fund in the days after the fire to support artists and art workers who lost their homes and studios. With the help of donors including the Gagosian gallery, Frieze, East West Bank – which is headquartered in Pasadena – and some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, that fund has reached $14m, surpassing its initial $12m target.

The scale of devastation on artists’ lives and careers is still largely unknown. Many are simply trying to survive. The artist Christina Quarles, whose home burned down in Altadena, along with a second that she and her partner owned next door, says they are currently being turned down from every Airbnb they apply for. “I think the ones that are left are kind of shady and when they find out that we have a toddler, they reject us,” she says. Quarles has already had to postpone a major exhibition with her gallery Hauser & Wirth because of an earlier fire at her property last year. “It’s hard to think about working when we don’t know where we will be living next month,” she adds.