The fire-battered chimney stands high above the open-air lot where Kelly Akashi’s home and art studio once stood in Altadena, California, before they tragically burned down in the Eaton Fire in January 2025. Since the devastating loss, Akashi has been tending to the grounds of her property as well as creating artwork that connotes themes of destruction and resilience.
In May, Akashi hosted Field Set, a two-day sculpture and sound installation event at the site of her former home that featured her sculptures and collaborative work with Los Angeles artist Phil Peters. Community members and fire survivors amassed at the site, connecting and engaging with various stages of post-fire transition—twisted burnt metal, a garden of vibrant flowers, glass sculptures, and massive speakers emanating sounds of demolition. The event paired Akashi’s delicate sculptures with Peters’ subterranean recordings of demolition and debris removal at Akashi’s property. Akashi and Peters’ union combined fire remnants with art that traverses physical and emotional landscapes of loss and renewal.
Tiffany Hearsey
Kelly Akashi sits atop speakers constructed by Phil Peters at her property in Altadena.
Akashi fondly recalls to The Progressive how she would marvel at the natural beauty of Altadena’s landscape before the fire forever changed it—the alpenglow of the San Gabriel Mountains at sunset, and how the trees framed the night moon. “The way the light makes the mountains turn almost pink and the way the moon would look in between the trees was very special,” she says. The relationships she formed with fellow artists in the community, too, were unique. “You feel this kind of common energy here.”
Akashi is one of thousands of Altadena residents impacted by the Eaton Fire, which decimated more than 9,000 structures and took the lives of nineteen people. But despite losing her home, Akashi says she continues to feel a strong connection to where her house and art studio once stood, and to her community. “If I don’t go there for a while I start to feel very alienated,” she explains, “not only from Altadena, but from the world in general. Because I don’t know where I live. I don’t know where I belong, and the place I feel I belong to isn’t really there anymore.”
The fire-scarred mountains above Altadena today are dotted with patchworks of green grass and wildflowers, as the flora and fauna begin to re-emerge anew. Below, scattered, blackened tree branches silhouette the sky as the hum of bulldozers and dump trucks can be heard alongside the squawking cacophony of Altadena’s wild parrots. Construction on new and rebuilt homes has popped up across the city, though nearly two-thirds of Altadena and Pacific Palisades residents remain displaced eighteen months after the fires, and fire survivors remain concerned about toxic soil from melted batteries, lead, asbestos, and other contaminants from buildings and cars burned in the fire.
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Tiffany Hearsey
Kelly Akashi's glass sculpture reflects the flowers she planted in her garden.
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Tiffany Hearsey
Community members and fire survivors walk the grounds of artist Kelly Akashi’s property in Altadena, California, during Field Set.
At the site of Akashi’s former home, she has planted a garden—a living collage of vibrant red, green, and yellow flowers. The surviving 1926 chimney stands tall, at once a sentinel and a witness to ruin and regeneration. Her sculptural recreation of the chimney, “Monument (Altadena),” was featured at this year’s Whitney Biennial at New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art. “I really wanted the sculpture to talk about the experience of moving through the disaster and not just what happened,” she says. “I’m way more interested in understanding how all the people in our community are moving forward and making something out of the situation more than just saying ‘This happened to us.’ ”
Akashi began her collaboration with Phil Peters less than six months after the fire. Peters, a sound installation artist who has produced subterranean recordings from Texas oil fields and the ports of Long Beach, also has a connection to the fire: His father’s house in Altadena was the sole survivor of an entire block of homes burned to the ground.
At Akashi’s property, Peters installed subterranean microphones in the ground that have been continuously recording for over a year. Using geophones, he started recording when demolition and debris removal began at Akashi’s lot. The microphones recorded the sounds of broken concrete, falling earth, grinding machinery, and disembodied voices. For Akashi, the demolition process produced another layer of trauma. “It’s just like a whole new trauma you have to go through,” she says, “and recognizing you’re never going to find the things you’re hoping are in the ruin.”
Tiffany Hearsey
Phil Peters sets up the sound installation for Field Set.
Still, Akashi says her collaboration with Peters ultimately helped her move through the process of grief. “I was so grateful to have him there with me,” she says, “because it changed the way I related to that experience.” Peters likens the microphones to Akashi’s chimney; both serve as an eyewitness to destruction and rebuilding. “It’s a witness of the unimaginable,” he tells The Progressive, “which feels important.”
The culmination of their yearlong collaboration was exhibited at Field Set, presented by Los Angeles Nomadic Division at the site of Akashi’s former home. The colorful flowers from Akashi’s garden are reflected in the glass sculptures she created after the fire. In juxtaposition, she combines remnants of the fire with one of her sculptures. Opposite the garden, a mass of elongated, skeletal, blackened tree branches lay on the ground, anchored by a glass orb and a ribbon of gold tassel.
Tiffany Hearsey
Attendees sit atop artist Phil Peters’s speakers.
The lot’s centerpiece, however, is the core of massive subwoofers constructed by Peters, blasting sounds of behemoth machines, of hammering and banging and voices hypnotic in their vibrations. The speakers were designed to be physically engaged by those who came to the event.The vibrations, he says, “resonate in your body.”
“We are actually linking ourselves through resonance to the site itself,” he says, “because we’re playing back the recordings of this site back into the site.” Attendees pressed their hands to the speakers and lounged on them, letting the vibrations pass through their bodies. The event concluded with musical performances by Celia Hollander, Paul McCarthy, Alex Stevens, and John Wiese.
“We are still a community,” Akashi says. “Even though we’re displaced, we’re not spiritually fractured from each other.”