For the first months of this year, gut-wrenching headlines detailed the incalculable loss in Altadena—an unincorporated, historically Black community in Los Angeles County’s San Gabriel Valley—triggered by the Eaton Fire. But beyond that devastation, there still exists a surviving community of artists, and their resilient creativity is the focus of an exhibition at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Los Angeles. Organized by independent curator Dominique Clayton, “Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena,” uses land and memory to center the vibrance of the generations of Black artists who have made Altadena their home.At the exhibition’s entrance is a mural filled with photos of life in a pre–Eaton Fire Altadena: Eldridge Cleaver and his family in 1977 at his mother’s home, Rhea Roberts-Johnson and friends at John Muir High School’s prom of 1999, the exterior of the Altadena Feed Store on Lincoln Avenue in 2005, Kalito and Carlo St. Juste beside their home’s peach tree in 2022, and other cherished communal moments. While at first glance it rings achingly nostalgic, this photo collage grounds the exhibition in the history of this place.Nearby, the art of three generations of an Altadena family of artists, the Davises, lines one wall. Further along is a gathering of works by artists, from Charles White and Betye Saar to Dominique Moody and Martine Syms, with ties to Altadena’s creative ecosystem. The exhibition, visceral yet heartwarming, provides a robust picture of the quiet comfort and pain within Black American life, depicted through the lens of this verdant enclave northeast of downtown LA.Clayton said the collage provides a means of showing what fulfilling lives Altadena residents created for themselves, “not so much the destruction, because we’ve seen enough of that on the news,” she said. From civil rights activists to artists and local residents, the mural shows that “Altadena was a sanctuary,” and contextualizes what this outer-LA neighborhood meant to so many.Works by La Monte Westmoreland in “Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena,” 2025, installation view.Photo Elon SchoenholzThese networks are extended through how Clayton organized the show, placing works in a way that showcased the artists’ connection to each other. Charles White, she said, “is an ancestor of the show but his spirit is very strong in Altadena.” His works are near ones by La Monte Westmoreland and John Outterbridge, who “were truly all friends and fans of each other.” Nearby are works by Dominique Moody, whose studio was close to Westmoreland’s home.Clayton also wanted “Ode to ’Dena” to showcase the full spectrum of Altadena’s artistic contributions, including not just visual arts but also music, film, and literature. One of Altadena’s most notable exports is Octavia Butler; Octavia’s Bookshelf, an Altadena bookstore named in her honor, has loaned reading materials to the exhibition.Beginning in the 1940s as part of the Second Great Migration, Altadena became one of few places in the Western United States in which Black families could own land, which led to the area developing into a middle-class neighborhood. Enveloped in its natural surroundings, Altadena became a safe haven for Black people, particularly artists who found the locale to be an endless source of renewal and inspiration. Clayton, who organized local responses to support Altadena’s artist community and preserve their creations, believes this environment birthed a creative renaissance, in which artists have long been able to operate “from a place of peace, with a roof over your head and land, space, and nature surrounding you,” she said.Three works by Liz Crimzon (left) and a video piece by American artist in “Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena,” 2025, installation view.Photo Elon SchoenholzLand is the focal point for works by American Artist, Liz Crimzon, and Grandfather, whose contributions pay homage to the area’s peaceful, yet unpredictable natural environment. American Artist’s nearly 7-minute video The Arroyo Seco (2022), for example, narrates the natural, Indigenous, and sociological histories of Altadena’s watershed, where generations of diverse inhabitants converged and, at times, clashed. With Mushroom Understory (2018), Crimzon paints the beautiful intricacies of wild fungi found along the many trails in the area.Grandfather’s 2017 film, The Sporadic Nature of Self, on the other hand, provides a more emotive depiction, showing a masked figure curiously and spasmodically traversing the brush, river-lined, and mountainous terrains. This nature-engulfed region, he said of the work, according to a wall label, shaped his art, exposing him to “the vast world beyond my immediate purview.”Keni “Arts” Davis, Triangle Square, 2018.Courtesy the artistLand also comes into focus in the context of what has been left behind in once-cherished spaces. Watercolors by Keni Davis depict before and after illustrations of Altadena streets and staple businesses, while an abstract rubbing by his daughter, artist Kenturah Davis, titled Altadena (2005), depicts a vintage map of Altadena, utilizing natural pigment and embossed with clay dust from her yard. Sam Pace breathes new life into remains found in the ashes in an assemblage piece, aptly titled, From the Ashes (2025), which incorporates a burnt flugelhorn that partially survived from the flames that engulfed the studio of musician Joel Taylor.But Clayton, who quickly learned just how extensive the magnitude of the loss was, decided not to feature any works showcasing the fire itself, or anything that felt too traumatic or “painful to digest at the time,” she said. Instead, the selected pieces reflect memories of Altadena, manifestations of Black American life, musings on family and community, and the “Black artistic legacies of Altadena,” in myriad ways. One such piece is I Just Missed Yew (2019) by Christina Quarles, who moved to Altadena six years ago. The painting’s abstract figures, coalescing along a stone wall, she said, provide a depiction of the “paradoxical nature of identity,” which deepened as she made her home in Altadena, a “beautiful community, where eclecticism, diversity, and beauty have raised and inspired generations of artists,” she said.John Outterbridge, REVIEW/54-Outhouse, 2003 (foreground), installation view, in “Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena,” 2025. Photo Elon SchoenholzFor a more historical perspective on the importance of Altadena, there’s John Outterbridge’s REVIEW/54-Outhouse (2003), a rustic, segregated outhouse decoupage with mixed-media images of Civil Rights era protests. The history of Black collectivism in the face of racial discrimination is not that distant a history, Outterbridge reminds us.Throughout the exhibition, Clayton has paired works that offer a cross-generational dialogue. In portraits by Kenturah Davis and Charles White, we see the attention to detail paid to the faces of Black sitters. In assemblage works, there is an subtle genius to the juxtaposition of disparate materials, like Sula Bermudez-Silverman’s Decadence (2024), an assemblage featuring wood casket stands, chewed gum, and insect-eaten isomalt sugar and resembling an ironing, or a collaborative installation by Betye Saar and Allison Saar, House of Gris Gris (1989), which invites you to step into an eerie wooden shed that seems to exist outside of time altogether.Two quilts by Mildred “Peggy” Davis hang on the wall in “Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena,” 2025, installation view.Photo Elon SchoenholzMildred “Peggy” Davis’s quilts and Marcus Leslie Singleton’s oil paintings encapsulate feel-good nostalgia of Black American pastimes. Davis’s Feathered Star (2008), made of soft pink fabric in which kaleidoscopic patterns and darker-hued strips are stitched together, transports you to the familiar warmth of Black grandmothers’ living rooms. Singleton’s Razor (2024), on the other hand, gives a snapshot of Black adolescence, illustrating young cousins on the sidewalk outside their grandmother’s house with scooters, a basketball, and Jordan sneakers in tow. These pairings weave together facets of Black artistic production that are in tune with ancestral ways of being, both looking back and calling ahead—continuously.These familial lineages are most evident in the exhibition’s centerpieces, Dominique Moody’s A Family Treasure Found (2002), consisting of three mosaic-like sculptures assembled from wood, glass, copper, and ceramics. To this, Moody has added sundry objects: figurines, a reconstructed mannequin, family photos, maps, old china sets. This family tree captures entire lives, the roads they traveled, and the artifacts they’ve left behind. Behind these sculptures, Moody holds space for her eight siblings, displaying canvases in their honor and one for herself. Each is personalized with their silhouettes, except for one, left blank due to that sibling’s untimely death during childhood. At the feet of each silhouette, Moody has provided a personalized caption; Sibling #4 “Name Unknown’s” caption, for example, reads, “the one left behind to straddle the fence between two worlds.”Dominique Moody, A Family Treasure Found, 2002, installation view, “Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena,” 2025, at the California African American Museum.Photo Elon SchoenholzClayton began her research for the exhibition, just weeks after the wildfires had been contained, by looking through CAAM’s permanent collection, identifying artists like White, Saar, and Westmoreland, who had historical connections to Altadena. The checklist began to grow as Clayton learned of artists who had already begun making new work in response to the fires, either out of their surviving pieces or wholly new ones. Sourcing work happened organically via word of mouth, with one artist would lead to another artist, as Kenturah Davis did with Capt. James Stovall V who is showing his painting entitled Blooming Duality (2024), which details two men facing opposite directions with white florals sprouting from their faces. “It was really [about] who’s available, who can I access, and how quickly can it be done,” Clayton said.“Ode to ’Dena” serves as a container for the collective memory that this enclave holds, which fits into the museum’s mandate, which CAAM executive director Cameron Shaw said, “is to preserve Black history and culture—not just in retrospect but in the present. That means we have to act quickly when our places and contributions are under threat, and we have to be intentional about which stories get told and who gets centered. ‘Ode to ’Dena’ is a reminder of what’s at stake.”