COMMUNITY PROJECT

Alma has been working with the Los Angeles Conservancy since June to lead a project called 1000 Voices Altadena Mosaic, inspired by the Native American proverb, “It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.”  She hopes to include at least 1000 community members in the making of a large-scale (25+ sq. ft.) mosaic using shards of pottery from homes that burned in the 2025 fires, as well as incorporating new clay tiles created in public workshops. 

As a “firebird” herself, having lost her home in the Eaton Fire, she found hope in her own ceramics artwork that had survived.  The 1000 Voices mosaic workshops bring our scattered community together, to share the broken shards of our past lives so that we can create something beautiful, new and better.  We learn how fire affects clay and ceramics; we safely clean and recover broken and burned shards, for use in the mosaic; and we create tiles inspired by what we loved about our homes and life, instilling images that we want to remember and memorialize.  The clay workshops are transformational– as we focus on the positive, we change the story of loss into one of hope and growth.  We come into life as creators, sharing our stories with other firebirds, and in doing so, develop resilience, healing and bonding with our community.

Through this project, Alma seeks to offer opportunities for fire-impacted community members to experience the creative and healing aspects of clay and mosaics as an artistic medium, and to contribute with their own symbols and images to be used in the finished project.  By providing these workshops, we address the overall inaccessibility of this therapeutic practice in Altadena– with studios lost due to the fire and the high expense associated with ceramics studios.  Her longer-term goal is to create a ceramics center in Altadena, with affordable classes which will contribute to the cultural resilience, health, and well-being of this community.