When Artworks, Cherished Objects, and Children’s Toys Are Fire Survivors Too

A ceramic fire truck the size of a brick, painted by her then 4-year-old son at the Color Me Mine in Santa Monica, was the first thing Nadine Riri found intact after the Pacific Palisades Fire destroyed their home.

Riri understood the irony of a fire truck surviving a wildfire. But after five hours sifting through ash and debris, the truck became the only physical item she could recover from her now 9-year-old son’s childhood. That single, indestructible toy marked a turning point for Riri. “When we found that, we felt we could begin letting go,” she says.

Part of her healing process was a visit to the Getty Center on June 14. Together with the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture (LA County Arts & Culture) and Art Recovery LA (ARLA), Getty hosted a Fire Recovery Conservation Clinic to help fire survivors repair and safeguard their cherished belongings.

Riri learned about the event from a Whatsapp group for Palisades residents and was grateful for the chance to preserve this remnant of her family’s past. “I almost tried to restore the truck at home, but I’m glad I came here,” she says.

Mending, together

The conservation clinic became a gathering place for those whose lives had been upended by the fires. Some participants, like Amber Feld, brought small items—silver coins that her son got in his Christmas stocking and from the tooth fairy, and a lapis lazuli egg—all that remained from a home turned to ash. Others, like Nancy Rothwell, brought in larger objects. Hers was a wrought iron cat doorstop from her childhood, saved from the rubble of the Altadena home she had lived in for 50 years.

The clinic that day, staffed by 70 conservators and experts, offered technical help and advice to about 90 participants. For example, at one station, a man brought a menorah with glass objects fused into it, asking about how to make it usable again. The answer: custom candles that would fit into the now-distorted fittings.

Besides the physical repair work, the sense of community and communal hope also appeared to be healing for participants. After several months of collective grief—and for some, a scramble to secure basic needs—it was a chance to share their stories.

A new ritual begins

Clinic attendee and artist Emily Ruth Hazel’s apartment survived the flames, but it was filled with ash and smoke. For her, the Altadena Fire’s impact was bittersweet. Her studio contained delicate mixed-media and lacelike, cut-paper works, all of which survived. But what would be too contaminated to keep? And how would she clean these works, known for their porous, fragile nature, without destroying them?

“I haven’t gotten rid of any work that was really meaningful to me yet,” says Hazel. She is still going through the process of determining what to do with each piece. At the clinic, she learned new techniques and strategies, from employing special sponges for cleaning delicate surfaces to using kitty litter to absorb odors and volatile contaminants.

While she sought advice about the mixed-media piece she had brought in, she also shared her post-fire journey: an emotional roller coaster where she was displaced for 11 weeks and moved eight times. One upside came of it, though: she made new artworks. “A ritual came out of my displacement,” says Hazel. “I wanted to leave a piece of art everywhere I stayed. So I would make a piece of my cutaway art, and I would leave it in the hotel room or Airbnb or with friends of friends I stayed with.”

Filling a community need

“Conservation is something that is traditionally behind the scenes and not available to the general public,” says Ellen Moody, a project specialist for the Getty Conservation Institute. She is also the cochair of the Conservation Association of Los Angeles (CALA) and a founding member of ARLA, a collective of art conservators who came together in the wake of the fires. “But in this case, when thousands of houses burned down, with all these personal collections lost, severely damaged, or covered in soot, we knew that there were thousands of people in need of conservation assistance. So we thought, how do we make this resource available to the public?”

ARLA members appeared on two Instagram Lives in January, held on the Your Neighborhood Museum and LA County Arts & Culture pages, and invited the public to join and ask questions about conservation. One participant had a stuffed animal covered in soot and wanted to know if her son could snuggle with it if she laundered it first. Answers: laundering will reduce (but not necessarily eliminate) the presence of toxic particles; air-dry in a well-ventilated space to avoid cross contamination in a dryer; judge by smell; look for particles with a loupe; hire a safety hygienist first. Another person wondered how to get rid of encrusted ash after cleaning her porcelain objects that survived the fire. Answer: contain it in a plastic bag before disposing of it. The discussion emphasized that individual safety tolerance varies, influenced by factors like age and respiratory sensitivities. To better respond to these and many other questions, Moody and other ARLA members created ARLA’s website. The site provides resources for those trying to care for their fire-damaged objects, including informational videos. Some topics? How to properly don PPE; how to remove soot from surfaces with a soot or cosmetic sponge; what kind of vacuums to buy; how to check if a vacuum’s filter is appropriate for soot removal; how to vacuum objects.

The idea for the in-person clinics came from Laleña Vellanoweth, founding ARLA member and conservator at LA County Arts & Culture, who pitched the idea to Kristin Sakoda, the latter organization’s director. Sakoda was on board, and LA County Arts & Culture provided support for materials and venue costs. Since local conservators were needed to power the clinics, they leveraged CALA’s network to recruit volunteers. Roughly 70 conservators helped at the first clinic on March 14 at the Pasadena Armory, the second on April 27 at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and the third at the Getty Center. The fourth will be held in September at the Altadena Library.

Looking to the future

Not everything can be restored to its pre-fire condition—sometimes, giving objects new life requires some imagination. Moody recalls one attendee who brought in a set of silverware that had “melted into one giant brick.”

“Sometimes, there’s not a lot the conservators can do,” says Moody. “Unless the person wants to keep the item as a keepsake—and some of this stuff does take on new meaning.” A diamond encrusted ring, for example, might be melted into a little clump if the band was made from gold or silver. But if it was the only belonging you could find in a house that burned down, “it becomes this memento of a challenging time,” she says.

As for Hazel, who is still between homes, the fire has gotten her thinking a lot about salvaging. She points to the artwork she brought to the conservation clinic: the mixed-media piece, which she originally conceived as a tropical painting. Before the fires, she had rescued a window screen from a dumpster, cut it up, and created something entirely new by layering the bits of screen over the work with paint and paper. Finally, she glazed it with Mod Podge for a bit of protection.

“I’m aware of the ephemeral nature of a lot of things,” says Hazel. “But it’s also very redemptive and meaningful to me to give things new life or to find ways that things can still come into beauty,” she says.