The Houston rapper, known professionally as Fat Tony, has lived in the Altadena neighborhood for a year and says he and his neighbors were prepared for heavy winds and perhaps a few days of power outages. But residents like Obi woke up the following morning to news that thousands of homes and entire neighborhoods had been burned to ash, destroyed by flames that wiped out large areas of Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
Obi and Huerta lost not only personal treasures, business opportunities and homes but also vital equipment and professional archives, adding to their emotional burden. Huerta left behind slides and transparencies of past work that he had planned to digitize for an upcoming book. She lost her Juniper Hills property to the Bobcat fire, which burned a large section of rural Los Angeles County.
I think you have a different focus after that. Maybe we become a little bit less attached to material things. Andrews is the co-founder of relief effort Grief and Hope, which aims to support creatives financially as they enter the long road ahead and was founded alongside a group of gallery directors, art professionals and artists like Bowers, Ariel Pittman, Olivia Gauthier, and Julia V.
As of Tuesday, Grief and Hope has received more than inquiries, and Pittman says the funds will be evenly distributed to applicants. The deadline for artists to submit a needs survey has concluded, but the relief effort will continue fundraising until mid-March.
For Grief and Hope, creating a more sustainable future for artists throughout the city begins with affordable studio spaces and housing. For photographer Joy Wong, losing her home of eight years meant losing the beauty of Altadena. It was also my studio space. Meanwhile initiatives and relief efforts have popped up around Southern California ready to assist with clothing donations, art supplies, professional equipment for creatives and more.
