In January 2025, wildfires tore via Los Angeles, devastating the neighbourhoods of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades specifically, and inflicting widespread injury. 30 individuals misplaced their lives, and greater than 16,000 houses and buildings have been burned.
A 12 months later, the LA design and artwork gallery Marta is presenting a gaggle present of crafted picket furnishings created from timber cleared from Altadena after the Eaton Fireplace. Titled ‘From the Higher Valley within the Foothills’ (till 31 January 2026), and organised with the sculptor and designer Vince Skelly, the present celebrates the resilience and the regenerative potential of wooden, but additionally of LA’s communities.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Vince Skelly – Marta LA)
Two dozen designers from town, every with their very own experiences of the fires, have participated. ‘I wished the present to really feel like a real group response to the fires, so we targeted on that includes native designers and artists,’ explains Skelly.
The members partnered with Angel Metropolis Lumber, which sources regionally downed timber to be used in group tasks. The lumber mill collected wooden cleared from Altadena, together with Aleppo pine, cedar, coastal dwell oak and shamel ash.
Every particular person or duo of makers was requested to remodel the wooden into objects of relaxation and contemplation. 30% of all proceeds from gross sales of the objects on the present is being donated to the non-profit organisation Greenline Housing to help in ongoing rebuilding efforts in Altadena.
Stool carved from Aleppo pine by Sam Klemick
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Sam Klemick – Marta LA)
Sam Klemick – one of many Wallpaper* USA 400 – hand-carved a stool out of Aleppo pine, designed to resemble material draped over a small desk. To handle the naturally occurring checks within the wooden, she added small picket ‘patches’ that forestall cracks from increasing, and referencing the patchwork strategies she makes use of in her upholstery work.
‘Patchworking, to me, is about mending one thing that’s damaged or wants restore,’ says Klemick. ‘That concept grew to become particularly significant as I mirrored on the supply of the lumber used for the present and its connection to the Altadena group.’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Sam Klemick – Marta LA)
Klemick says she’s going to ‘always remember’ the morning after the fires started. ‘The sky was darkish and gray and ash rained down closely as I walked to my automotive. I used to be lucky to dwell exterior the evacuation zone, however I nonetheless headed to a pal’s home to hunker down. It was all so surreal; should you didn’t lose your own home, you had an in depth pal that did.’
For her, the present ‘creates an area to recollect and mirror – and never transfer on like enterprise as traditional,’ she says. ‘It’s straightforward for individuals to come back collectively instantly after one thing like this occurs, however the endurance of assist a 12 months later, and for years to come back, additionally actually issues.’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Vincent Pocsik – Marta LA)
Artist and designer Vincent Pocsik, who usually depicts human physique elements in his sculptural and furnishings works, made a stool out of cedar and cherry wooden, that includes ears. ‘I consider wooden has a really excessive absorption of power,’ he says. ‘Since this piece of cedar was salvaged from the fires I knew it might be holding a lot of that power and I wished to honour that.’ The inclusion of ears signifies the ‘absorption and understanding’ that the fabric holds, he explains.
‘I feel a present like this does converse to the resilience of this metropolis and its artistic group, in addition to the resilience of people typically,’ says Pocsik. ‘If the wooden is telling a narrative on this present, it’s saying that it survived and nonetheless has life to provide.’
‘If the wooden is telling a narrative on this present, it’s saying that it survived and nonetheless has life to provide’
Vincent Pocsik
Rachel Shillander’s ‘Energy Pole’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Rachel Shillander – Marta LA)
Architect-designer Rachel Shillander’s piece, ‘Energy Pole’, is a stool created from a single salvaged block of coastal dwell oak. The floor is labored, or as she explains, ‘embroidered’ with nails, creating shimmering photographs and textual content. Featured are the lyrics to a folks track generally related to the Nice Chicago Fireplace of 1871, ‘Previous Girl Leary’, however rewritten for the Los Angeles fires. Elsewhere Shillander depicts flames and a compass.
‘The work attracts on folklore, nostalgia, and the best way societies narrate disaster,’ she says. ‘Visually, the stool recollects the bottom of a neighbourhood energy pole, layered over time with nails, notices, flyers and knowledge, recording group life.’
Bench by Shin Okuda and Kristin Dickson-Okuda
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Shin Okuda – Marta LA)
Shin Okuda, founding father of design studio Waka Waka, labored along with his textile designer spouse Kristin Dickson-Okuda to create a bench from a trunk part of an ash tree. That includes a single ornamental cushion, the minimally crafted bench offers a spot to relaxation near the bottom.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Ryan Belli – Marta LA)
Designer Ryan Belli, in the meantime, created a furnishings piece out of Ponderosa pine that acts each as bench and monument, with a boulder-like kind for sitting on and a carved ‘headstone’ topped by a small aluminium urn that symbolises the fragility of life. ‘The devastating fires offered a terrifying reminder of the temporal nature of all issues,’ says Belli. His takeaway: ‘Be good to your self and others.’
‘From the Higher Valley within the Foothills’ is on view at Marta, LA, till 31 January 2026
3021 Rowena Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90039 – 2004
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Asher Gillman – Marta La)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Ellie Richards – Marta LA)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Marley White – Marta LA)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Snyder DePass – Marta LA)
Supply: Wallpaper
