Famed Altadena artist John Outterbridge’s archive burned down. His daughter is asking for help

For more than a year, Tami Outterbridge has been spreading the word. If you have a piece of artwork from her father, John Outterbridge, let her know.

Her father was a prominent artist in California’s Black Arts Movement, rooted in civil rights. While John’s work is in places like LACMA in L.A. and MoMA in New York, the Eaton Fire burned down his Altadena home, destroying what remained of his private work and collections.

That’s why Tami is on this mission. She wants anything and everything, from old cellphone pictures to works of art people are willing to part with. Her goal is vast. It includes plans for an exhibit called "Digging Bridge," a community-sourced archive, a documentary and even a book about her father.

Tami Outterbridge at her father's empty lot in Altadena.

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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“I wish I still had my home,” Tami said. “I wish I still had everything in it, all of my father’s artwork, all of the artwork of his colleagues … but this is redemptive.”

So far, Tami has collected more than 1,000 submissions just by word of mouth.

Honoring a legacy

The name “Digging Bridge” is an ode to her father’s nickname and the effort to salvage belongings from his home’s ashes.

John Outterbridge was a groundbreaking assemblage artist in Southern California. His work was heavily influenced by his military service and his father’s junk-hauling job.

His career started in the 1960s. He used everyday objects — even what some would consider junk — to create three-dimensional works of art that explored themes of Black identity and racism in America. Rags were one of his favorite materials.

John Outterbridge at a Watts Towers Art Center meeting in Watts on June 15, 1985.

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Leo Jarzomb

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Los Angeles Public Library/Herald Examiner Collection

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Some of John’s earliest works used debris from the Watts uprising in 1965. Among his accomplishments, he spent more than 17 years as the Watts Towers Art Center’s first director. He died at 87 years old in 2020.

Last year, the fire destroyed decades of materials, including slides, photos and artwork.

 “That loss in particular spoke to an erasure of legacy, an erasure of history that I didn’t feel like our family or my father deserved,” Tami said. “So it felt very personal.”

The power of a shoe

Dominique Moody, a highly respected assemblage artist, is one of the people who have responded to Tami’s call from her studio in Historic South Central. John was a mentor to her.

Among other things, Moody is donating part of a shoe installation given to her by John. It was inspired by the time a journalist threw a shoe at President George W. Bush in 2008. The piece consisted of shoes suspended from the ceiling with rags.

“It came after that moment in the nation’s political history and how an ordinary person with a shoe could then spark a conversation around the world,” Moody said.

John Outterbridge's shoe artwork being donated by Dominique Moody. The photograph is only a placeholder. Moody will donate the real shoe to the archive once she "digs" it up.

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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She’s also creating new pieces for "Digging Bridge," alongside many others from L.A.’s Black Arts Movement, including the Brockman Gallery co-founder Dale Brockman Davis, Charles Dickson, LaMonte Westmoreland and Stanley C. Wilson.

One of Moody’s new artworks uses a charred tree branch and iridescent glass bottles from John’s destroyed home. She said it has “extraordinary sculptural bones.”

“The blackening of it, with assemblage, every material you can imagine can be used,” she said. “Which is why I love it. It is always different.”

This piece by Dominique Moody, which is a work-in-progress, uses debris from John's home. She says bottle trees are important symbolism in African culture and were common fixtures where John grew up in North Carolina.

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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Moody's other "Digging Bridge" piece is based on a trip Tami’s parents took along Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles.  “What they found was this almost desolate road and small community out in the middle of nowhere,” Moody said. “They, in celebration, danced in the road amongst the tumbleweeds.”

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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The artist in John

Another artist who’s donating to "Digging Bridge" is Emily Hopkins, a teaching artist and former executive director of Side Street Projects, a mobile arts nonprofit based in Zorthian Ranch in Altadena.

Hopkins is also an assemblage artist. She remembers John’s love of stories and keen eye for people. “He was very intuitive. A little bit magical,” she said.

She gave Tami an old photo from around the 1940s that John shared in 2012. It shows him as a young child surrounded by his siblings on a small porch  at his childhood home in Greenville, North Carolina. Hopkins recalled that John gave her the photo at a time when she was questioning her life decisions. He picked up on that.

Emily Hopkins holds up a print John gave Side Street Projects, which contained an old family photo and his notes to a publisher for a catalog, on September 4, 2026. It was donated to the organization for a fundraiser.

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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Hopkins says John made it clear they all knew they were destined to be artists as children. From left to right is his brother Freddie, John himself, sister Gloria, and brothers Warren and Marvin.

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Cato Hernández/Cato Hernández

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LAist

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“He said, you know, ‘I’m gonna tell you something. You are an artist, and you do not have a choice,’” Hopkins said. “Then he pulled out this picture and said, ‘In this picture, this is me. I’m an artist.’”

That’s the kind of personal experience Tami is looking for. She wants "Digging Bridge" to go beyond what you would normally see in a museum or read online about John. “You will know him through the stories that we can tell about him,” she said.