“I lived somewhere in here,” artist Kenturah Davis says as she points to an area on an embossed print she created using an old map of Altadena.

Using the past tense in that sentence is palpable.

Like so many in the community, Davis lost her home in the Eaton fire. Loss was everywhere, but one thing the community refused to lose, she says, was their heritage.

“Very quickly after the fires the sort of long history of Altadena as a kind of haven for Black and brown community resurfaced in a really beautiful way,” she said.

That history is the focus of the exhibit Ode to ‘Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena, currently on display at the California African American Museum. 

Davis has a few pieces in the exhibit, including this one titled Volume V, which features a piece of wood from a tree she had to cut down from her property before the fire.

“I saved some of that wood and turned some of that into these vessels,” she explained. “This is one of the few things I have left from the house. So it’s very sentimental and really fortunate that I had moved it to the studio maybe a few weeks before the fire.”

Dominique Clayton is the curator of Ode to ‘Dena. She reached out to Davis after the fire to explore ways to utilize art to benefit the community.

“People need to have a space to gather and to talk and to reflect,” she said, “and what better way to do that than in a museum that has the mission to preserve and protect culture.”

Standing together amid all the art, the women discussed the impact of the exhibit, which features the work of roughly two dozen artists, as well as a collection of photos capturing life in Altadena before and after the Eaton fire.

“All the stories in this room kind of bring the heart of Altadena together, which is what I wanted,” Clayton said. “And I wanted people to walk away, not sad and mourning, but just inspired and reflective of everything that Altadena has established.”

“All the Black folks who are there, you know, their spaces were hard won,” Davis added, “And I think there’s a kind of resilience around reclaiming it and holding on to it. I feel that strength here in the show.”

The exhibit features sculptures and music, assemblage and a collection of books put together by local Black-owned bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf, which became a community hub and resource center immediately after the fire. 

(Spectrum News/Tara Lynn Wagner)

Clayton was, of course, familiar with the works of notable Black artists who had studios in Altadena, like Charles White and John Outerbridge, who she describes as “the father of assemblage in Los Angeles,” but in putting this exhibit together, she learned just how deeply their connections go.

“To see that really historically Black artists have always been in community with each other,” Clayton explained, “and Altadena was one of those places where that’s very evident and very clear, and which is why the show is so important because we almost lost that.”

The show, she says, is a reminder of how important it is to preserve that history, a history that, for Davis, is personal. 

Her father, Keni Arts, has been painting Altadena for decades. Some of his before-and-after watercolors are part of this exhibit. 

So is her mother, Peggy Davis’ quilt, many of which were lost when the home they lived in — Kenturah’s childhood home — also burned. 

However, there are also two paintings created by her two-year-old son, Micah. His inclusion in the exhibit, she says, represents the possibilities they hope to infuse back into Altadena.

“We’ve committed to rebuilding and we know many others are,” Davis explained. “The journey is hard. We’re hoping to keep as many people on this journey as we can. But yeah, this is a kind of glimmer of hope for all the possibility that could make Altadena beautiful again.”

In the hope that that long artistic legacy will continue for generations to come.