SMC art professor finds strength in community after losing her home
The glass fusing process differs greatly from glass blowing; blowing is immediate and physical, while fusing requires meticulous placement of smaller glass pieces to create a mosaic before fusing them in the kiln. Surrounded by the adult students in her community education summer fusing class, Professor Terri Bromberg contrasts blowing with stone carving; she teaches all three.
Bromberg calls blowing an “art sport” with a steep learning curve; it takes minutes, at most hours, while stone carving can take weeks, sometimes months, she says. To make glass fused artwork, the sum of the parts must be greater than the whole, and like stone carving, it can take a long time.
After losing her home and decades worth of her artwork in the 2025 Palisades fire, Bromberg and her family were left emotionally devastated and without a home. But the outpouring of support from her community of colleagues and students at SMC, Bromberg says, helped them through it.
Bromberg first moved to the Palisades after marrying her husband Bruce in the early 1980s. After he died in 2023, one of her two adult daughters, her son-in-law and their dog, Chrys, moved in with her. Bromberg requested her family members’ names be withheld because of concerns about scammers targeting fire survivors.
She lived with her children for roughly two years before the fire broke out on Jan. 7, taking the home Bromberg and her husband had shared since 2005. Bromberg said the date remains stuck in her head; while she was teaching a drawing class, a student told her, “Look what’s happening up by your house.”
When Bromberg turned on the news, she recalled seeing billowing smoke rising near her residence. She told her class to keep drawing, and that she had to leave immediately.
“I got stuck on Sunset Boulevard for four hours in gridlock with the ash and the smoke, and people directing traffic said, 'The fire's coming this way. If you see flames, just get out of your car and go the other way,’’’ Bromberg said.
Returning to SMC after the Los Angeles Fire Department redirected her, Bromberg called her daughter and learned the same had happened to her kids. She said her family loaded Chrys and a few belongings into their car, headed down the mountain access road from her house, and then were sent back due to traffic. A few hours later, after watching the town burn around them through their windows and on the news, they tried again. By this time, first responders had brought in bulldozers to clear the abandoned cars so EMT’s could reach those stranded, and her family was able to safely evacuate.
Once Bromberg was reunited with her family, they had to figure out where they would stay. She said that having spent decades building a community at SMC — enrolling as a glass student in the mid-2000s, then being hired as a teacher in 2008 — paid off; Bromberg received countless texts and calls from her students and colleagues offering support and a place to stay.
Bromberg then turned and introduced her friend, Judith Davies, who’s been taking Bromberg’s classes since 2014. Davies said she called Bromberg the night of the fire and offered her the spare apartment in the complex she owned in Ocean Park. She recounted saying to Bromberg, “I know you have places to go, but if you need this place next door, just know that it's always open.” Bromberg’s daughter, son-in-law, and their dog stayed in Davies’s apartment for weeks after the fire.
Denise Bachman, who lives a few blocks from SMC, said she's been enrolled in Bromberg’s classes for over 10 years, and contacted her as soon as she saw the fire on the news. Bachman remembered texting her while Bromberg was stuck in traffic trying to reach her kids, telling her, “Get out as soon as you can and come to my house, and you know, just stay here, and we’ll watch the TV, and if you can go home you can go home.”
Bromberg recalled spending the first night with Bachman watching the fire line advance in shock, constantly checking where it was, before it engulfed her home the next day. Bachman recollected standing outside her house the night of the fire, watching it surge through the mountains, “I thought, ‘Should I be panicking now too?’ Because if it jumps the freeway, we’re next.”
On the same day she learned her home was gone, Bromberg says the question of rebuilding was answered. After buying some essentials at Costco while standing in the parking lot with her family, Bromberg said her daughter told her, “I can't go back and live up in the hills. She says I can't do it."
Bromberg said she understood the trauma her family went through trying to escape from the fire. Later that week, while she stayed at Bachman’s house, she saw a realtor's tag hung from the front doorknob advertising a new house on the market. That house is now where Bromberg and her family live.
Bromberg stayed with Bachman for a few weeks after the fire until Mandy Altman, another long-time student-turned-friend, invited the Brombergs to stay at her house. Altman’s Mar Vista home would be vacant for the following month, while she was on vacation with her family. Bromberg said when the Altmans returned, they insisted she and her family stay as long as they needed.
From the time she first learned of the fire through her moves from one student's house to another, Bromberg said she continued teaching, never missing a day. With support from her students, financial aid from the SMC Foundation and a GoFundMe campaign started by her longtime friend and colleague, Professor Emily Silver, Bromberg was able to continue doing the job she loves.
“We started it within 48 hours of her house burning down, and I believe we met the goal in under a week. The art world in LA is really amazing, and people really stepped up across the entire city to support other artists that were deeply impacted,” Silver said.
As of mid-August, Silver’s GoFundMe campaign has raised $29,704 from 174 donations, greatly surpassing its $20,000 goal.
Professor Silver, who was made art department chair in June, said she’s known Bromberg for 15 years; over that time, they have taught sculpture together and shared an office. She said they've grown to be more than colleagues — close friends.
In April 2025, Bromberg sold her property, purchased her new home in Santa Monica and moved in with her family. She said her new residence needed repairs due to its age and neglect, but she’s happy there with spare rooms for her kids and glad to have an art studio again.
Looking to the future, Bromberg says she hopes to teach for another 10 years; despite losing a lifetime’s worth of art, she’s excited to debut her new collection at the upcoming SMC Faculty Art Exhibit at the Barrett Gallery on Oct. 13. Bromberg said she’s always creating and has taken pieces of rubble and scraps from her destroyed artwork and home to reconstitute into new artwork. She said, "My new work is about resilience and recovery and moving forward.”