Tangible memories in brick and mortar

Artist helps the public process the January fires by creating memorial out of salvaged chimneys

- By Tyrone Beason

GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times L.A. ARTIST Evan Curtis Charles Hall recently completed the painstaking relocation of the chimneys for his memorial project.

High above Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Kraig Hill stood on a concrete slab and gave a tour of a home that is no longer there.

Destroyed in the January wildfires, the home Hill grew up in now exists only as a blueprint in his mind.

Photographs by GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times EVAN CURTIS Charles Hall stands between two chimneys salvaged from the Palisades fire. He said he sometimes listens to the bricks.

A concrete Buddha used to gaze toward the horizon from its perch beneath a coral tree. Behind the house was the swimming pool that Hill, a semiprofessional musician and producer, and his partner Hashi Clark, an artist, converted into a concert venue. They used to invite guests to sit in the shallow end to listen to musician friends playing in the deep end.

Murky rainwater now filled the pool-slash-auditorium. The Buddha survived, but the coral tree that shaded it was gone. Only one small piece of the house remained: a brick fireplace with its chimney, situated near windows with bird's-eye views of the Pacific Ocean below.

The fireplace was the living room’s only heat source. Hill and his family would gather around it when he was young to keep warm on chilly winter days.

So when conceptual artist Evan Curtis Charles Hall asked Hill if he wanted to be a part of Project Chimney, a memorial to the January fires that will be made up of chimneys salvaged from six destroyed homes — five in Pacific Palisades and one, Hill’s home, in Malibu — Hill didn’t hesitate.