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HOLLAND, MI — Watching the news coverage of the Los Angeles wildfires ravage neighborhoods hit Holland artist Carolyn Stich right in the heart. Another natural disaster was upending lives miles away while she sat along the shore of Lake Michigan.
“We don’t have fears [here in Michigan] that all these other people have,” she said. “It makes me grateful to be here but how can I help? Being an artist I can’t always help financially, but I thought, ‘what else can I do?’”
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Stich started her art career as an architectural illustrator for Summit Properties doing pen and ink drawings of listed homes.
She wanted to donate her time and talent to recreate the estimated 16,000 homes and businesses that were destroyed, but didn’t have any connections to Los Angeles.
Then one day a local news station’s “good news” segment caught her eye. An LA-based artist, Asher Bingham, was drawing homes that had been destroyed in her neighborhood.
Stich reached out over social media and immediately clicked with Bingham.
The two artists, separated by 2,000 miles, bonded over the mission.
“I enjoy drawing and its good for my soul to just be doing something,” Stich said. “This is a crazy world right now.”
Bingham created a system to sort through the growing number of requests coming in through her social media and email. Bingham inputs addresses and Stich looks up homes on the MLS real estate data base.
The two artists are tackling around 1,500 requests currently.
Stich said she’s consumed with drawing these lost homes and finds herself wandering back to the wildfire project in the midst of other work. She jokes that she needs to “duct tape herself to the chair” to get anything else done.
Holland artist Carolyn Stich is drawing homes lost in the Los Angeles wildfires. Stich is working with a California-based artist to sort through 1,500 requests from displaced residents of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhood. (Photo Courtesy of Carolyn Stich)Carolyn Stich
At the two-month mark, Stich completed her 40th drawing. Some of the homeowners have responded, which “puts a face to it and makes it very real.”
It’s been emotional to see the humanity in these home sketches, she said, knowing the families who occupied these houses no longer have any tangible things that represent their home.
This project brought the national news to her kitchen table.
“It’s humbling to me,” she said. “The chance to do my part makes me feel better.”
Stich and Bingham are still accepting requests through this Google Form. All commissions are free.
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