Wildfire Survivors to Create Ash-Based Murals for Climate Protest

Union members, wildfire survivors and environmental activists will gather Saturday to create protest murals using paints made from ashes collected from recent devastating California wildfires.

Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, a local artist who lost his home in January’s Eaton Fire, will lead the event at 12:30 p.m. at the Pasadena Community Job Center. The completed murals will be displayed at a demonstration on Tuesday that aims to highlight “Big Oil’s role in California wildfires.”

Participants will use ash gathered from both the Eaton and Palisades fires.

The mural-painting event connects to California’s ongoing lawsuits against major oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell. These legal actions allege the companies concealed fossil fuels’ climate impacts since the 1970s, with the state seeking billions for wildfire mitigation and recovery. Benjamin Franta, an Oxford climate law expert, likens the cases to tobacco litigation, saying “The damages could be enormous.”

Aparicio, a Yale-trained artist known for large-scale sculptures blending Mesoamerican and Angeleno themes, lost his Altadena home and his father’s archived artworks in the fire. His previous work uses materials like rubber casts of ficus trees and volcanic amber to explore displacement and memory.

He is among more than 50 artists in Altadena who lost homes or studios in the January disasters.

The disaster also destroyed Altadena’s Alto Beta gallery, an artist-run gallery in Altadena founded in 2022 by Brad Eberhard. The fire consumed Mary Anna Pomonis’s exhibition “Quiver” and its 10 large-scale paintings just two days after it opened. Eberhard lost 30 paintings, 60 ceramics, 2,000 vinyl records, and an art book library stored at the gallery.

Alto Beta was known for showcasing emerging artists and hosting experimental projects. The gallery’s destruction marked the loss of a vital community hub and a career highlight for Pomonis.

Tuesday’s demonstration on Tuesday will emphasize what organizers describe as the fossil fuel industry’s role in exacerbating wildfires through climate deception and the companies’ responsibility for climate-driven disasters that have intensified California’s wildfire seasons.

The 2025 fires caused more than $250 billion in damages in Los Angeles County, according to an initial estimate by  AccuWeather. This surpasses Hurricane Katrina’s $200 billion inflation-adjusted cost, making it the costliest U.S. natural disaster on record.

The Pasadena Community Job Center, which connects day laborers with employers, will serve as the venue for Saturday’s community art project.