At the beginning of 2025, a series of wildfires struck Los Angeles County, California. On January 7 a year ago, the Eaton Fire broke out in the San Gabriel Mountains, burning for 25 days and destroying up to 9,000 structures, while the Palisades Fire, the most devastating fire in L.A.'s history, destroyed nearly 7 thousand buildings and endangered much of its architectural heritage, coming close to the Getty Mansion and the home of Charles and Ray Eames.
How salvaged trees from the Los Angeles fires become design objects
Twenty-two objects made from trees salvaged in Altadena are on view in the exhibition “From the Upper Valley in the Foothills” at Marta gallery in Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
Photographs by Erik Benjamins courtesy Marta Los Angeles.
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- Ilaria Bonvicini
- 19 January 2026
To commemorate these dramatic events, which left an indelible mark on the memory of the city and its community, the Los Angeles gallery Marta, with the support of sculptor Vince Skelly, inaugurated a group exhibition titled From the Upper Valley in the Foothills", where twenty-two artists and designers were invited to present handcrafted wooden objects made from trees sourced in the Altadena area, the foothill region most severely affected by the Eaton Fire.
Thanks to a collaboration with Angel City Lumber — a sawmill specializing in the recovery and reuse of fallen trees across Los Angeles County — the logs, carefully catalogued and traced back to their origins, became material for both design and contemplation. Aleppo pines, cedars, evergreen oaks, Shamel ash: each participant was able to select trees from this wounded biome, which enters the exhibition space transformed into functional objects — seats, benches, bowls — in a gesture that celebrates the regenerative power of wood.
The results oscillate between authorial cabinet-making and the ready-made. Dan John Anderson’s chair recalls the charring effects of fire, while Ryan Belli combines Ponderosa pine and aluminium in a sculptural, monumental structure that seems to exorcise trauma through symbolic abstraction. Noah Cohen works by subtraction, carving a chest from coastal live oak and decorating it with egg tempera, while Rachel Shillander, with Power Pole, treats a block of oak as if it were “embroidered” with nails into a form of communal fabric. All the works seek to go through the transformation of matter, becoming objects that witness destruction and, at the same time, overcome it.
The exhibition choice also amplifies this sense of traversal. The works are not lined up along the walls in didactic sequence, but scattered throughout the space like trees in a forest. In this sense, "From the Upper Valley in the Foothills" is a device that functions in its rendering of domestic geography the ghost of a lost landscape: it reminds us that these objects are born to be touched and experienced, as are the forests they pay homage to, questioning the role of artists and designers in these times of profound climatic instability.
Exhibition: From the Upper Valley in the Foothills Curated by: Marta gallery, Vince Skelly Where: Marta gallery, Los Angeles, United States Date: January 10 2026 - January 31 2026