First came the “wows,” followed by waves of emotion.
“I thought we were done with the tears,” said Seth Fonti, a 44-year-old father of two, his eyes glassy. “Apparently not.”
As Fonti and his wife, Rachael Klein, 44, gazed at the 8-by-10-inch oil painting of the Pacific Palisades home they lost in the January wildfires, the couple couldn’t help but become flooded with memories of the life they’d built over the past decade.
“For me, it was seeing the stairs — the entry that we walked so many times, where we watched people come up and hugged them in the open door,” Klein said. “The fire was the end of something magical.”
As Fonti and Klein stared at the simulacrum of the home they’d shared for the last decade, their grief commingled with gratitude for having experienced so many firsts in that singular location: first home as a married couple, first time bringing a baby home from the hospital, first steps, first days of school.
The painting wasn’t just a forever reminder of the home they once had; it’s the first item they now own for their next house.
Swathed in shades of yellow ochre and Naples orange to re-create the facade of the home and manganese blue to capture the ocean view behind it, the oil portrait Fonti and Klein received was painted by West L.A. artist Ruth Askren and gifted free of charge through a newly created collective known as Homes in Memoriam.
Artist Ruth Askren paints the Fonti-Klein home that was destroyed by a January wildfire in Pacific Palisades.
(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)
Started during the thick of the fires, Homes in Memoriam is a joint project created by two native Palisades residents who wanted to provide comfort to those who lost everything from their former lives in the January fires.
Ashley Miller, a 24-year-old whose family home was destroyed in the disaster, created the Instagram account almost immediately after the fires began. As a licensed therapist, she had offered her services at a local emergency shelter but was gently turned down because there were more people wanting to volunteer than there were those seeking help.
She then remembered a gift she’d received a few years back — a painting of a house she’d lived in during college — and decided she wanted to provide something similar to those who no longer had tangible reminders of a place they once called home.
“This was something different I could do,” Miller said. “For families to be able to have something to remember their home by when a lot of us weren’t even able to get anything out before they burned down, I just felt that would be really impactful.”
Interior designer Amy Beemer Lev, 32, who grew up in the same Pacific Palisades neighborhood as Miller, had a similar idea. Although her family no longer lived in the Palisades and she now resides in the Bay Area, she sought a solution for giving back that didn’t involve money or donations.
“There are some things you just can’t buy or replace, and a home is where you spend most of your time and make most of your memories,” said Beemer Lev. “It’s about more than just the things inside of it, so having this kind of keepsake is special.”
The pair connected on Instagram after Beemer Lev found Miller’s Homes in Memoriam page. The duo has been running the collective ever since. Beemer Lev and Miller are 10 years apart in age and have never met in person, but their shared background — they attended the same elementary school and discovered they grew up down the block from each other — created an immediate closeness that bonded them beyond their shared mission of wanting to help others.
To date, Homes in Memoriam has completed 200 portraits of homes in the Palisades and Altadena, with 178 paintings in the works and counting. The project has attracted participation from more than 150 artists across the country as well as artists in the U.K., Canada and Australia, with Miller and Beemer Lev, who are not artists, handling the logistical aspects of the collective.
Askren uses oil paints for her tribute to Fonti and Klein’s home in Pacific Palisades. (Emil Ravelo / For The Times)
Offering free art of homes lost to the Southern California fires is not an idea unique to Homes in Memoriam. Multiple artists are offering similar services, eager to donate their talents and gifts to a healing cause. One endeavor, the Eaton Fire Chimney Project from the photographer behind @houseofhollywood on Instagram, offers free digital photos of the remains of affected properties as a means of capturing the homes in their final states before those sites are cleared.
Askren, who has painted four homes including Fonti and Klein’s for Homes in Memoriam, devised the plan to paint lost homes after experiencing “survivor’s guilt” for not being able to share in that collective loss. Her childhood home is located in the Palisades but was spared the fire’s wrath because of heroic efforts from neighbors who used hoses to fend off flames in the immediate area.
“For me, it was a matter of feeling really compelled to do something,” Askren said. “And this is what I do. I mean, this is it: I’m a painter. This is what I can do to help people cope with their loss in the smallest of ways.”
Through searching hashtags on Instagram, the 72-year-old artist discovered the Homes in Memoriam account and asked to join the fold. It’s one of the most common ways artists have discovered the collective, Miller said. Many were coordinating free paintings on their own and decided to join Homes in Memoriam after getting overwhelmed with too many requests or feeling their offers were getting lost in the shuffle of social media.
Mary England Proctor, a self-described “78-year-old married grandmother in Nashville, Tenn.” who has been painting since she was 6, has completed seven portraits for Homes in Memoriam. In an email to Beemer Lev, she expressed how much she loved making the art, although she hated the reason why they were doing it.
There are few rules that the Homes in Memoriam artists must abide by other than using colors in their works and creating a piece that is at least 8 inches by 10 inches. Many of the artists work with watercolors, like Proctor, who combines the medium with pen, and some artists create their images digitally. Askren prefers to use oil paints, opting for a less technical and more romanticized re-creation of the homes.
Seth Fonti holds a painting of his family’s home by artist Ruth Askren at his family’s temporary housing in Encino. Fonti’s home burned in the January wildfire.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
The artists choose their assignments from an ever-growing spreadsheet compiled by Beemer Lev. After completing a project, the artists mail the work to Miller who frames and then ships it to the families. No money is asked for the assignments, but a GoFundMe page launched by the collective has garnered funds to pay for shipping costs and reimburse the artists.
To request a painting, families can send an email or Instagram message listing their name and the address of the home they lost along with photos. They can also make requests for specific motifs they’d like included in the works, such as their dog gazing out the front window, the oak tree their grandfather planted or the car with the canoe on top parked in the driveway.
A post from Homes in Memoriam, somewhat ironically, appeared in Fonti’s Instagram feed the day after his first return visit to the Palisades. Calling it “the worst day of my life to date,” Fonti was immediately interested in the art program, particularly because his family evacuated with only a suitcase full of essentials, losing everything else in the fire.
“Sitting there with those memories in rubble, it’s really hard to describe, but that’s not how you want to remember your home, as just charred destruction,” Fonti said. “Houses don’t have funerals. But this initiative allows us to honor these homes for what they once were.”
Fonti and Klein are determined to rebuild on the same lot in the next few years. Although their next home might look different, its predecessor won’t be forgotten thanks to the oil painting they now have in their possession.
“I’m not going to turn the page and forget about it. And I’m also not going to harp on this the rest of my life,” Fonti said. “I’m going to pay homage in this new house to that old house, whether it’s by putting the painting up on the wall right when you walk in or somewhere else, so that chapter of our lives is appropriately remembered.”
As the rest of the city and county moves on from the fires, Homes in Memoriam will continue operating. Miller and Beemer Lev have no plans to slow down the project any time soon. They expect to receive painting requests over the next few years as people move through their grieving processes.
“It’s OK if it feels too fresh right now,” Miller said. “Come back a year from now, and we’ll have it done for you.”
