“From Ashes We Gather” will feature a performance and closing event for photographer Gayle Nicholls-Ali’s exhibition of portraits of fire survivors at 4 p.m. today at DENA Heals, 300 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 151, in Pasadena.
Julia Grob and Kahlil Almustafa of Home Microphone will present an in-process script drawn from recorded interviews with community members, according to the event announcement.
Home Microphone began as a pop-up stage curated and produced with Grob and Almustafa at Creative Workers Rising, a resource fair for fire-impacted creatives held May 30 at the Eaton Fire Collaboratory in Altadena. Cornerstone Theater Company co-hosted that fair with the Arts & Culture Coalition of Altadena and said the stage hosted performances from 7-year-olds and 70-year-olds. Cornerstone said of it that “it held a space for wild comedy, gorgeous improvisation, collective joy, and shared mourning.”
Nicholls-Ali lost her Altadena home and the collection of antique film cameras she used to make her work in the January 2025 Eaton Fire. “I not only lost my home, but I lost all my equipment and my photo studio,” she said. She founded Altadena Photographers, which runs a registry matching photographers who lost gear with donors willing to replace it.
“We’re … showing our [works] online, but it’s so important for us to also show in a gallery setting or show in a community setting so that people can get their eyes on printed work,” she said last year.
DENA Heals opened in January 2025 and describes itself as rooted in Altadena and Pasadena.
NEED TO KNOW
“From Ashes We Gather” takes place today, Sunday, Aug. 30, at 4 p.m. at DENA Heals, 300 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 151, Pasadena, in the Paseo outdoor mall. For more, contact Megan Wanlass at mwanlass@cornerstonetheater.org or Sunder Ganglani at sganglani@cornerstonetheater.org, both of Cornerstone Theater Company.