News

Press: On Fire, Memory, and an Evolving Process

Forbes: California Wildfires Give Rise To New Artistic Process Forged By Flame
By Leslie Katz

A feature-length article about my project. View PDF

J Weekly: Wildfires, tides, landlines: A Jewish artists’ laboratory grapples with change

An article that includes all the artists in the exhibition at the Magnes. View PDF

Burn Line Featured in Forbes: On Fire, Memory, and an Evolving Process

I’m grateful to share that Forbes recently published a feature on my ongoing project Burn Line, focusing on the process I’ve been developing over the past year and the stories embedded in these works. The article looks closely at what I call pyrotypes—charcoal images created by engraving photographs into wood and then transforming that wood through controlled burning—and situates the work within a broader conversation about art, wildfire, and transformation.

What I appreciate most about the piece is that it does not treat the work simply as an object or aesthetic outcome, but as a process shaped by collaboration, loss, and experimentation. The article traces how each Burn Line piece begins with a photograph of an object damaged or destroyed in a Southern California wildfire—items that once carried daily, ritual, or deeply personal meaning. Through carving and fire, those images become something materially altered: neither photograph nor sculpture alone, but a hybrid artifact forged by the same elemental force that caused the loss.

The article highlights one specific work, Lost Terra-Cotta Bust, which is based on clay sculptures recovered from the burned home of my friend Robin Wallace’s family in Ventura County. Her reflections—on standing in the debris, on the strange dignity and resilience of what remains—mirror many of the conversations I’ve had with people who have lived through fire. In that sense, the project is as much about listening as it is about making. The resulting charcoal pieces function as both images and relics, carrying forward memory while acknowledging irreversible change.

There is also a practical transparency in the article that feels important to me. It walks through the technical steps of the process—from image preparation and CNC carving to carbonization in a low-oxygen environment—underscoring that this work is still evolving. I see Burn Line not as a fixed technique but as an ongoing set of experiments: testing materials, burn durations, tools, and contexts in order to better understand how fire can function as both subject and collaborator.

Finally, the article situates Burn Line within a larger ecosystem of artistic responses to wildfire devastation, including exhibitions that treat burned objects as historical artifacts rather than debris. That framing aligns closely with my intentions. These works are not about recovery in a sentimental sense; they are about what persists, what changes, and how meaning is reshaped when utility is stripped away.

I’m thankful for the care with which this article engages the work, and for the opportunity it creates to share Burn Line as an ongoing inquiry—into fire, memory, and the fragile line between destruction and transformation.

Burn Line Featured in J. Weekly

I’m also honored to be included in a recent J. The Jewish News of Northern California article covering LABA Bay Area’s 2025 fellows and this year’s theme of change. The piece highlights one of my Burn Line works—a charcoal image of a menorah based on a ritual object damaged in the recent Southern California wildfires—and places it within a larger conversation about how artists are responding to loss, displacement, and transformation.

The article describes the process behind the work: engraving a photograph into wood and then converting that wood into charcoal through controlled burning. What I appreciate about the coverage is its attention to how the material process mirrors the subject itself—objects altered by fire becoming artworks literally forged by fire. The menorah piece, in particular, is discussed in relation to Jewish ritual, memory, and resilience, and is linked to the biblical image of the burning bush that is aflame yet not consumed.

The article also situates Burn Line within the broader LABA framework, where ancient Jewish texts are used not as prescriptions but as catalysts—fertilizing contemporary artistic responses to the present moment. It was meaningful to see the work contextualized alongside such a wide range of practices, from performance and film to interactive installations, all grappling with different facets of change.