feature / college-news / faculty / students / alumni / exhibitions
May 02, 2025
By Solvej Schou

We Will be Strong  

Resilience in the Ashes installation at Grad Show pays tribute after Eaton and Palisades fires  

“We are there for you and we will be strong.”  

That was the message that graduating Illustration student HM Newton wrote on a card and hung on a sculpture of burnt tree branches—part of the ArtCenter installation Resilience in the Ashes at the College’s Spring 2025 Grad Show of graduating students’ work.  

Set against a gray Grad Show wall and composed of three elements—The Tree, The Photograph and The Chair—Resilience in the Ashes paid tribute to Los Angeles County in the aftermath of January’s devastating Eaton Fire in nearby Altadena and Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades.  

The moving and interactive installation, a collaboration between Fine Art alum and artist Jeffrey Sugishita (BFA 23), alum and Photography and Imaging Chair Everard Williams (BFA 89), and Spatial Experience Design Associate Chair James Meraz, was a space of reflection and healing at ArtCenter’s first Grad Show—featuring the work of a record 327 graduates—since the fires.

“The ArtCenter community coming together after the fires restored my faith in humanity, genuinely,” said Newton, whose father had to evacuate due to the Palisades Fire. “It’s such horrible loss, and we’re still being strong.”  

That expression of strength, loss and community flowed through Resilience in the Ashes.  

Throughout Grad Show, more and more visitors hung cards of thoughts and hope on The Tree, by Sugishita, a former ArtCenter valedictorian. The sculpture was created out of branches from a tree in a Japanese tea garden in the front yard of Sugishita’s Altadena house, where he lived with his mentor. The home, his studio and tools were all destroyed in the Eaton Fire.  

“I was attached to that tree, and would sit by it, read books, and play with my cats,” said Sugishita, at Grad Show. “I didn't want to let it get demolished and taken away. I wanted to create something new out of it, as a form of remembrance and a way to move forward. Resilience is very closely tied to the concept of creativity. Having an interactive installation, in the form of an artwork, has a direct impact on people on an emotional level.”

The Photograph, by Williams, featured a large framed black-and-white photograph of a charred remnant of wood—leaning against a backdrop—from Williams’ Altadena home, destroyed in the Eaton Fire. His parents’ home was also destroyed in the fire.  

While Williams’ two daughters walked around Grad Show, he reflected on the photo.  

“I knew the instant I set foot on my property after the fire, and I saw the wood, and I saw the ashes of my photo books, that I would be making work,” he said. “I looked at that charred wood as a representation of the community, because everyone [whose homes burned] has it.”  

He also appreciated collaborating with Meraz and Sugishita, and the diversity of experience reflected in Resilience in the Ashes, he said, with each piece very different.  

“The word ‘resilience’ is certainly associated with trauma, but I also tend to think of it as one of the building blocks for rebirth and regrowth,” said Williams. “I'm taking a positive outlook on the tragedy. This is an opportunity to rebuild and do something new. It's a tragedy to have lost the things that I lost, but I have my girls, and my folks. That is what is most important.”

The Chair, a burnt metal chair salvaged from the Eaton Fire-destroyed residence of a beloved Product Design alum, faculty member and mentor, the late Norm Schureman (BS 85), was accompanied by a poem, also titled Resilience in the Ashes, by Meraz, that hung nearby on the Grad Show wall:  

This chair, once consumed by flame,
now stands—scarred, silent, alive.
Its twisted iron, a mark of loss and rebirth.
blackened in our blaze, yet holding space.
A burnt tree echoes the same.  

In these scars, not only ruin,
but quiet endurance.
The fire speaks through us—
Our community, forged by flame,
shaped, consumed, transformed.
We honor the past and embrace the future  

Here, in this frame of metal and wood,
is the heartbeat of our shared strength,
our collective resilience ascends  

We will reimagine reseed, replant, rebuild.  

Here, we honor this journey—
the creativity that heals, the hands that rebuild,  

Together, we rise from the ashes

For Meraz, who created ArtCenter’s Luke Gabriel Meraz Memorial Endowed Scholarship in 2020 after his 20-year-old son Luke died in 2019, poetry has been a source of raw, soulful expression. When Meraz found out that Sugishita, a former recipient of the scholarship, had lost his home in the Eaton Fire, and Williams as well, he showed them kindness and support.  

“The three pieces in the installation represent our dreams, our memories and our resilience,” said Meraz. “Jeffrey represents our dreams because he’s the future of ArtCenter. Everard and his photography represent resilience, and he also represents us as faculty and mentors. We’ve all been affected and devastated by this fire. We need to be able to talk about these painful things. As creators, we need to be able to create out of this. This kind of loss sharing—sharing your story, sharing your work—is important. We rise together as a community.”