How four Los Angeles artists are doing a year after the wildfires – The Art Newspaper

A year can stretch far too long for artists who have lost not only their homes but their studios and even their archives. In 2025, The Art Newspaper interviewed four Los Angeles-based artists who lost one or a combination of those vital armatures in the devastating fires in January of that year. Kelly Akashi, Christina Quarles and Adam Ross had homes and studios in Altadena, an area in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains that was heavily impacted by the Eaton fire. And Kathryn Andrews lived in the Pacific Palisades and lost her home in the Palisades fire. All four artists returned to work quickly, proving both their resilience and resourcefulness, but the fires and their aftermath continue to affect their lives and work.

Akashi had lost both her house and studio in the Eaton fire. She rebounded quickly because she had to—she had an upcoming show at Lisson Gallery, originally scheduled to open in late January 2025. She managed to salvage work from the ashes of her studio and make enough new art to open her show on 20 February—just in time to overlap with Frieze Los Angeles. Some of her recovered bronze and glass pieces had signs of fire damage, but she came to see these as an integral part of the work. Next month, Akashi will participate in the Whitney Biennial in New York, for which she says she is making “a glass and mortar re-creation of my chimney”.

Determined to keep working, she has had to make art “in many different places” this past year, including “in the basement of my new rental; a studio donated by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; extra space the foundry I worked with gave me; and recently, my new studio in San Gabriel”.

Like many artists, Akashi says she was severely underinsured and that it will take another six months to a year to sort out when and how she might rebuild. Of course, finances are a major consideration. “Homeowners’ insurance was very fast, but my business-income insurance has been a nightmare,” she says. “My art insurance has still not provided anything either.” Indeed, a major hurdle for many Los Angeles artists has been getting properly compensated for the works damaged or destroyed by smoke, fire and ash.

Ross lost 5,000 of his own works, almost his entire archive. “The main thing I lost were drawings, because I never sold a lot of them,” he says. “People always wanted paintings.” He managed to save 11 paintings in an admittedly foolish run back to his studio as flames engulfed the building. “We went back once, got the paintings out, watched the studio and the house burn to the ground, got away,” Ross says. There were a total of five buildings on the lot, and Ross was able to save two of them by hosing them down. Today, one of the buildings is a rental. Ross uses the other as his new studio. “It was nice to get what I had been working on for the past two years out,” he says of his mad dash into the flames.

Ross and his wife, the artist Caitlin Ross—who lost all her work in the fire—have found a temporary living space in downtown Pasadena. Fortunately, their rent is covered by insurance, but that will run out in about eight months. They would like to move back to Altadena and even had complete plans drawn up for a prefabricated house, but their case has been complicated by the joint ownership of the property with Ross’s ex-wife, who has not given approval to their plans. Ross says that he and Caitlin are “trapped in limbo, which is very stressful”. He adds that they are also “engaged in a massive lawsuit” with the local utility company Southern California Edison (SCE)—as are many others, since there is evidence that the Eaton fire may have been caused by SCA’s malfunctioning power lines. (SCE is now offering to settle with affected residents who forego their right to further claims.)

Meanwhile, Quarles has been busily preparing for her next show—her first with Hauser & Wirth, which was postponed last year. The artist’s works in The Ground Glows Black (until 3 May) reflect her experience with the fire. “My work has greatly shifted in the past year,” she says. “There are still elements that are consistent—figuration, pattern and architectural interventions within the frame—but there’s a greater density to the environment that the figures are in.” Together with her paintings, Quarles’s show includes a new series of charcoal drawings. “After the fire, I was compelled to work with charcoal, with its obvious material correlation to fire,” she says.

Even before the Eaton fire, Quarles had already suffered a home fire the year prior. “So with the Eaton fire, we lost the house we were building,” she says. “We lost what remained of the house that had the previous house fire, and then we lost the Airbnb we were staying in. But my studio did survive the Eaton fire. I was working in it that day.” In the rush to leave, one window was left open. “That night, everything got so hot that all my paintings became tacky,” she says. “A fine layer of ash and debris came in and fixed like a spray across all the canvases. All the paintings that were in there had to be meticulously restored.”

Last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped in to clean up about 6 in. of the soil, but Quarles wonders if that was enough, especially since there was no cleaning outside the property line. Like most who might rebuild, she will consider more fire-resistant construction materials when the time comes; there are already new building codes in place. “We’re doing things differently the second round, not rushing to return to normal,” she says. “We did a big push to find a stable, temporary living situation while we figure out what’s the best move. We’ve also been doing construction projects since 2019 with the studio, so we need a little breather.”

Andrews, after losing her home in the Palisades fire, has moved to another rental on the West Side. “I stayed with several different friends in several places before I settled where I am now,” she says. “It took some time to resettle. I’m in West Los Angeles, not terribly far from where I lived previously.” Fortunately, she had a studio downtown, which was not affected by the fires.

In an effort to help other artists and art workers, early last year Andrews teamed up with fellow artist Andrea Bowers, the gallery directors Olivia Gauthier and Julia V. Hendrickson and the dealer Ariel Pittman to found the nonprofit Grief and Hope. To date, the organisation has raised $1.74m, distributed to almost 300 people who lost homes, studios or workspaces in the January 2025 fires.

While most of the funds went to artists, the money also helped art workers like studio assistants, art handlers and educators. “That inclusion was very important for us to consider,” Andrews says, “because so often art workers aren’t recognised. They’re often underpaid, and they’re often struggling.”