In a recent Los Angeles Times profile, CalArts alum Chelsea Bayouth (Art BFA 08) recounts returning to her Altadena, California, home on Jan. 11, 2025, while flames from the Eaton Fire were still burning.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Bayouth recalled saying as she saw the destruction.
Her family’s home and the accessory dwelling unit that housed her art studio were gone, along with paintings, supplies and journals she had kept since childhood. Among the ruins, however, Bayouth found pieces of her porcelain sculptures.
Bayouth had begun working with high-fire porcelain only five months earlier. Fired in a kiln at temperatures above 2,000 degrees, the porcelain survived with iron, glass and other remnants of her studio fused to its surface. She has since refired some pieces, allowing those materials to become part of the finished works.
Bayouth’s love of ceramics began in childhood, but she returned to the medium after becoming a mother and struggling to find her way back to making art.
“It was a doorway into my art practice again,” she said.
Now working from her home studio in Silver Lake, Bayouth creates palm-sized figures exploring grief, spirituality and motherhood through Sea Bay Ceramics. Professionally, she works as a freelance puppet builder for film and television, with projects including the Emmy-winning series Robot Chicken and Olivia Rodrigo’s music video “the cure.” A poet whose work has appeared in online literary magazines, Bayouth also has a manuscript she is working to publish.
Read more in the full Los Angeles Times feature.
