They came holding some of what survived the Eaton Fire: dog tags and keys, a marble sculpture, a pearl and diamond ring, a rusted candelabra, Christmas ornaments, a custom needlepoint square, a Chinese lacquer box, and even an Acoma Pueblo pot, cracked but intact.
More than 50 art conservation professionals volunteered their time and expertise to help restore fire-damaged treasures to Eaton Fire survivors Saturday, Sept. 13, at the Altadena Main Library. The conservation clinic offered a range of services and information on salvaging and recovering everything from photos to paintings.
Lataska Pittman, 67, a teacher at Los Angeles Unified School District, lives in Glendale after losing her home of 37 years in the Eaton Fire. She brought two vases recovered from the rubble of her home.
“I found this attached to the side of the house, and Samaritan’s Purse carefully and gently picked it up for me,” she said, referring to the Christian aid group that helped clear lots after the fire.
Conservator Catherine Sincich of Torrance took what looked like a white vase-shaped object and picked, brushed and vacuumed it to reveal a 19-inch avocado green vase. As she worked, Sincich also trained student conservator Kelly Liu of Diamond Bar.
Pittman was grateful.
“This was in the front living room near a window,” she said. “It belonged to my mother and it was one of the things my daughter took from her Summit Avenue house after she passed. Now it’s an angel watching over us.”
Pittman and her children are working on plans to rebuild her Calaveras Street home, and while she still feels overwhelmed, Pittman said she is blessed by nonprofits that have stepped in to help.
After receiving detailed care instructions to completely wash the cracked vase of plaster, she watched as volunteers carefully boxed up her heirloom.
“I can live with this,” Pittman said, adding she will share her newfound art conservation knowledge with her children and grandchildren. “There’s a new life to this. Now they’ll know what a family tradition looks like.”
Once restored, the vase “will go right back in the living room near a window” in her rebuilt Altadena home.
“I’m very appreciative for the art people, for everyone who is here,” Pittman said.
In the days after both the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted across the county, art professionals and staff from the county’s Department of Arts and Culture posted videos on Instagram on how to people can protect themselves as they rooted through rubble or cleaned their belongings.
A mutual aid group, Art Recovery LA, launched a website that continues to help protect and restore disaster-damaged items, preserving their heritage and personal histories.
Kristin Sakoda, director of arts and culture for the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, said four conservation clinics have been held, the first offered two months after the fires at Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. Other clinics were held at the Getty Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Los Angeles.
“We’ve seen incredible moments of hope and acts of service,” Sakoda said.
The art conservation community had not seen an emergency like the two wildfires and are learning much about fire damage to all sorts of materials.
“It’s important to realize it’s not just about artwork in the museum,” said LaLeña Vellanoweth, conservation and collections manager with the L.A. County Department of Arts and Culture. “Everything has a history and a connection, from something you picked up on vacation to your kid’s favorite item. Everything is worth preserving. And it has a whole new meaning now, having gone through the fire. To many people, it’s what’s left of their past life.”
In a way, the owners of such objects are brought to life alongside their valuables, which are checked-in according to media (paper, photos, objects, textiles, paintings and objects) before a conservator consults with the owner and cleans, documents and boxes each item.
Nancy Jean Tucker brought her grandmother’s silver spoon, that kept its utilitarian shape but is tarnished black and green, as well as a small plaque from an award her in-laws received that conservators told her could be cleaned enough to be legible again.
Tucker also brought two blobs of melted aluminum where she hopes her grandmother’s diamond engagement ring may still lie encased.
“It was in an aluminum eyeglasses case, and I found these right where they’re supposed to be,” she said. Eula Pickens, of Kentucky, was an elementary school teacher in Kentucky and Indiana, and did not get to meet her great-granddaughter. Tucker said it would be nice to have something of hers to keep in the family.
“That’s the hardest part, not having the things,” she said. “My husband has one photo book and that’s it. An oak desk of my Dad’s that we’d wanted to get rid of actually protected a lot of what we found after.”
Tucker, who lost her home of five years in the Eaton Fire, now lives in Burbank, but she and her husband hope to return to raise their daughter in Altadena, where she was born.
Linnaea Dawson and Amy Green of Silverlake Conservation have volunteered for the clinics since the fires. Experts in tiles, objects and architectural elements, they have helped the grassroots campaign Save the Tiles that is collecting Batchelder tiles from burned homes around Altadena.
“It’s nice to know you can do something,” Green said. “This is a lot of the work we’ve been doing for years. Fire physically changes the chemical composition of items, in some form for the worse, or the better, but at least they have something.”
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger spent the morning hearing stories about what item people brought in.
“I’m amazed at how resilient they are,” she said. “It’s heart wrenching to know that many of them walked back into absolutely nothing other than going through and trying to find pots and all that. And when they find it, what do I do with it? And so today shows me that first of all arts plays a role.”
Barger said her visit was bittersweet because of the stories she heard behind every item.
“I’m so focused on making sure that I provide the support for people to be able to rebuild, but what people lost is so much more than bricks and mortar, and that’s what we’re seeing here today.”