For many, the wildfires that devastated LA already feel like a distant memory. This is understandable. Such is the hyper-frenetic pace of news, disasters, outrages, and other distractions in our age. We don’t intend to judge. However, at HieronyVision, we’re still putting the pieces back together as we process the aftermath. We have no other choice. Most of HV’s core team has not had a normal night’s sleep since the flames swept through our communities on January 7. While it might not be a silver lining, these sleepless nights have given us time to reflect on the full extent of the loss.
It should go without saying that the loss of lives, homes, and livelihoods are at the apex of this tragedy. And in this regard, we’ve been fortunate. Miraculously, our major losses were relatively minor, including the spaces in the center of the burn scars that have hosted HV arts events in the past. But we’re not here to rank the scale of suffering. We’ve lost materials that can’t be replaced, like items from the family archives of actress Joan Bennett, the femme fatale in Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street. A legitimate part of film history is gone forever. Thankfully, Bennett’s portrait from her other collaboration with Lang, The Woman in the Window, survived.
Maybe this is why we’ve been thinking a lot about the impact of the fires on art. Artists in our community who we love and work with have lost their homes, been displaced, and more. Everyone who fled had to make a choice: what to bring? We know that artworks, from masterpieces that could have hung on the walls of museums to the first specks of inspiration on a canvas, are irreplaceable. That’s what makes an original work of art.
But think beyond the most obvious version of art. Altadena and Pacific Palisades are thriving creative communities. Many of the residents, indeed many we know, are not just visual artists but filmmakers, musicians, writers, editors, actors, set and costume designers, and more. Even in an age of cloud storage and digital hard drives, it’s hard to imagine that films, songs, manuscripts… even just notebooks of ideas, inspiration, and random observations were inevitably lost. They didn’t make the cut over the children or the family pet or even a change of clothes. Which makes sense! Or maybe they were a top priority, but then, in the confusion of panic, they were left by the door or on a table or bed.
The headlines will continue to measure the scale of this tragedy in dollars and deaths. This is what we’d like to start moving past. We’re at the stage of wondering about the less easily quantified, or even less tangible. For instance, will there any way to put a true value on the surreal eclecticism of the Bunny Museum in Altadena, or the way the Bridges House in Pacific Palisades seemed to defy gravity to anyone driving down Sunset Boulevard? We will rebuild, restock, retrofit, and reclaim our beloved spaces and lost works. Maybe, like Rick Rubin believes, these works aren’t gone but just back in the creative aether waiting to manifest in someone else’s vision dream quest. Even if their loss is only temporary, an idea our lost icon David Lynch may have liked, we can still reflect on the void left in all our lives.
Want to do more? Here is a partial list of places to help support relief for the arts and artists affected by the fires:
Artists & Artwork
https://www.getty.edu/projects/la-arts-community-fire-relief-fund/
https://womenoftype.com/collections/stickers/products/sticker-pack-emergency-fundraiser-for-la-fires
https://spoke-art.com/products/george-townley-la-wildfire-charity-print-release
https://shop.anatebgi.com/products/alec-egan-poster
Film & Entertainment
https://entertainmentcommunity.org/am-i-eligible-help
https://airtable.com/apphLrzhEhGNlP5G0/paghQ9nEqtnaWFvh9/form (to offer assistance to members of the documentary filmmaking community)
https://iatse.net/take-action/disasterresponse/
https://sagaftra.foundation/wildfire-emergency-resources/
https://www.sweetrelief.org/naturaldisasterfund.html
https://blackmusicactioncoalition.donorsupport.co/page/LAFIRERELIEF
Image Credits
Palisades Fire. Photo by the US National Forest Service.
“HV House Survives the Fire.” HV Original.
The Woman in the Window. Fritz Lang, 1944.
The Bunny Museum in Altadena, California, from December 2021. Photo by Suiren22 licensed via the Creative Commons.
The Bunny Museum in Altadena, California shortly after the Eaton Fire in 2025. Photo by LA County.
SAY HELLO!