Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio didn’t sleep at all the night before the Eaton fire hit his Altadena neighborhood in early January. The winds were intense, and there was a power outage that had him feeling on edge. He and his partner sat in the dark, on their phones, glued to the news as scary details came out of the Palisades. But things took a turn for the worse when Aparicio started getting messages from friends about a fire above Pasadena. “We could see these massive flames wicking off the top of the mountain and moving fast,” he said.
Aparicio left without realizing it would be the last time he saw his house. The couple managed to escape with their three pets — cats Bird and Mammon and a dog, Dune — and a few things. Unfortunately, his home office had years of drawings, project drafts, and notes, along with paintings by his father, Juan Edgar Aparicio, an artist who captured the trauma of the Salvadoran civil war. All of it was gone.
Among the scorched remains was a rare 100-year-old blue cactus that Aparicio had planted with hundreds of native species in his yard. An immense sculptural beehive oven, “Pansa del Publicó,” which he initially built as a public sculpture at L.A. State Historic Park, was beyond repair due to toxification from the fire.
One of the paintings by his father lost in the fire, “Pesadilla de un General,” focused on children who lost their lives in the war. The painting featured a young girl engulfed in a radiant glow, pointing her finger at a general standing before her. The model was Eddie’s sister Carolina, named after Juan Edgar’s preteen daughter, who disappeared along with her mother at the hands of paramilitary forces.
Aparicio had brought several of his father’s wooden wall sculptures and paintings home from his art studio in North Hollywood weeks before the fire, thinking they would be safer there. One of the pieces included a dedication to the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador. “I consider [these] to be his most significant and important works,” Aparicio said.
Aparicio continues to make art that tackles causes important to him, including his experience escaping the Eaton fire. He explores themes of erasure and memory to honor and reflect on his family’s history during and after the Salvadoran civil war. Inspired by Indigenous techniques, his Salvadoran heritage, and L.A. roots, Aparicio uses materials like amber, petrified resin, and rubber in his artwork.
This month, Aparicio will participate in the UCLA Center for the Art of Performance Omnibus Series, “Salvage Efforts,” reflecting on U.S.-Salvadoran collective memory. His first major show in 2018, “My Veins Do Not End in Me,” portrayed the effects of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran civil war through artwork from three generations of his family.
Aparicio’s work is influenced by his familial experiences, suggesting that memory is inherited. His first solo museum presentation in 2024 included an installation of amber splayed across the floor. The title “601ft2 para El Playon / 601 sq. ft for El Playon” referred to the lava field near El Salvador’s capital that became a dumping ground in the war.
During a climate rally in March, Aparicio participated in the painting of a collaborative mural. He designed the chimney and brick fireplace in the work, based on the only remaining structure in his house. The paint was made from ash and charcoal ground from the Altadena and Palisades fires.
As he walked through the debris fields in his old neighborhood, Aparicio found pieces of glass that had morphed into an iridescent color from the heat of the fire. He saw the rubble of the Eaton fire as a palette for his future work, finding inspiration in the destruction around him.
