‘My House Burned Down’: capturing an artists experience with disaster
When Camilla Taylor, an artist and teacher at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Occidental College (Oxy), decided to curate a gallery focused on their house burning down, they did not feel triumphant. They do not feel like a “phoenix rising from the ashes” which people constantly told them they would be. Taylor instead just felt the loss of their home.
“It just feels exhausting, and it felt worse that no one would allow any of us to grieve and to feel angry about this thing that happened to us. People want us to be triumphant. And I said in the curator's statement, it's a major inconvenience, cause that's what it feels like. It doesn't feel like this historic thing. It just feels like I am so inconvenienced, and the rest of the world is moving on immediately,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s home was one of over 9,000 structures the Eaton fire burned down Altadena in January. In the aftermath of the fires, Taylor decided to use their experience and came up with the idea for their gallery, “My House Burned Down”.
Taylor said, “losing everything is, you know, it's paralyzing for a while. You don't know how to move. We're just figuring out where to find socks, versus being able to take advantage of the support that was there. So I wanted to really present that specificity of experience to artists right now.”
“My House Burned Down” takes place at Track 16 in Downtown LA. The show has four artists from the recent fires in LA and four artists who have experienced fires in the past. Taylor said, “the title of the show is just, there's no subtext. It's about your house burning down.”
Each artist has pieces that reflect their own experiences with their fires. “It's a consistent experience,” Taylor said, “when you were a person who defines yourself around the objects that you make, and your ability to make those objects, how do you change, and how does it change your continued art making when suddenly all of the objects are gone, and your ability to make them is gone as well?”
The day Taylor’s house burned down, they were driving back from an artist residency in Oregon. They only received periodic updates on the fires as they were taking a social media break. They found out about the Eaton fire when they were on the highway in the valley and saw the fire lighting up the mountain and moving towards their home.
“As soon as I got home, I ran inside, and I screamed at my partner. We gotta go! We grabbed our four cats, we put them in the car, and we drove away, and that was it. No documents, no precious objects,” Taylor said.
“I didn't think my house was gonna burn down. I didn't think anything. And then it was gone, so it still feels very surreal. I still kind of feel like eventually I'll get to go home. But I'm sure that that'll go away and feel more real the longer and longer it's been,” they said.
Taylor’s piece in the show is called “Change” which is interactive. It is inspired by their experience etching grave stones and references a quote on Octavia Butler's grave which says, “all that you touch, you change. All that you change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change,” from the Parable of the Sower.
It consists of a map of Altadena made in white ink on antique paper, a black wax cast of their house sculpted from memory to make a crayon and a plaque with the word “change” that stands out in the center. The viewer takes the map and places it over the plaque to make an etching by rubbing the crayon over the top, creating an impression of the word change on the map.
“You can have this piece of art, but you destroy a piece of my home and a piece of Altadena at the same time,” Taylor said.
The other artists in the gallery are: Christina Bothwell, Jacy Catlin, Jamison Carter, Margaret Griffith, John Knuth, linn meyers and Catherine Ruane. The artwork ranges from sculptures that were in the artist's studio when it burned down, such as the work from Griffith, to photos Caitlin took in the aftermath of their house fire in 2020.
Knuth’s addition is three colored globes with speckled dots all around them which he was working on when he lost his home. He fed colored sugar water to flies and the dots are their excrements. The globe with the most speckles shows the colors the flies were most attracted to.
Ruane’s contribution is hand drawn burnt palm trees, framed in gold. She painted neon pink on the back of the frame, giving a glowing effect around the piece from the reflection on the white wall, meant to mimic the glow from a fire according to Taylor.
Bothwell works with ceramic and glass, with both her pieces containing babies within the glass. Taylor said, “I think so much of her work is about these children and young people, both in peril and being protected. When her studio burnt down, she had small children. I don't have children, but I wonder what that is like to try to protect them that night.”
Carter has a piece called “Josie’s First Car” which is the engine block from his daughter's first car that melted down from the heat of the fire. A photo of the charred car is embedded in epoxy at the top.
Taylor has been back to their home in Altadena since the fire and will rebuild with their partner, though they note it is more to do with the cost of buying a house elsewhere than wanting to go through the process of rebuilding. Nothing survived the fire.
“Anything that was in that fire was transformed. The windows didn't break, they melted. It was that hot. And it's very surreal to see a piece of glass on the ground that looks like a folded towel... No personal objects that were in that kind of heat survived, but, you know, I had this collection of marbles, and now it's just this solid mass that I've saved. I have buckets of these weird objects, and I don't really know what to do with them, 'cause they're kind of trash, and they're kind of not trash at the same time,” Taylor said.
Taylor never received an evacuation warning that day either and is still left in limbo while the city figures out what happened in Altadena to cause these failures in getting the warnings out.
Taylor said, “we could see the fire coming. We could see it outside of our house, visually, and we're never evacuated. And so many of my neighbors died because the forces that were supposed to keep us safe fell apart that night. People died because of that, and more people could have. And this city, the county, did not try to help us. And there's still not an answer.”
Immediately after the fire, Taylor even felt like the world was pushing them to move on.
Taylor said, “for a day, it mattered, and then right after that, it didn't matter anymore, unless you were there or right by there. And I understand the world moves on, but it's exhausting to have to. We are not ready. I had to teach class the day my house burned down. I didn't know what to tell my students, and they were asking about what was due that day, what their homework was. And all I wanted to say was... I don't fucking know. I don't know... but I’m not in a position where I could just take time off, where I could just stop. I didn't tell them that. I told them, ‘I will figure it out and I will email you all’ and that's what I did.”
Taylor said, “my experience since the fire has been, especially as an artist, consistently reaching for a tool that's gone, and it's almost like a phantom limb. I had this set of knives that I used for every sculpture and ceramic I've ever made, and they're gone, and it's so hard to think about how to make something without them. And so many people have been very generous and gifted me tools, but it's not the same. It's very different to get used to the feel of something and how it makes a mark when it's new and then having to adjust everything being new... it's both paralyzing and it's not.”
My House Burned Down continues at Track 16 until June 28.