Sherry Marger has painted in acrylic for decades — capturing scenes from her travels throughout the United States and abroad — and the garage of her Newport Beach home is a testament to the artist’s dedication to her craft.
There, canvases of red-rock Sedona skylines hobnob with portrayals of lush plant life, old-world courtyards and bridges and farmhouses backdropped by autumn in Vermont.
“When people come into my garage they say, ‘Oh, look at this nice art gallery,’” the 78-year-old artist said Wednesday. “I’ve got things hanging on walls and on shelves and stashed in a variety of places.”
A painting by Newport Beach artist Sherry Marger depicts a home on Pacific Palisades’ Galloway Street that was lost in the January wildfire.
(Courtesy of Sherry Marger)
An accomplished amateur, Marger has displayed her creations in small shows at her local library and John Wayne Airport. She also freely offers her work to friends and local organizations, like City of Hope or the museum at the Chabad Center for Jewish Life.
“I’d rather have people enjoy my paintings than have them sitting in my garage,” she reasoned.
So, it’s no surprise that when Marger read a February Los Angeles Times article about Homes in Memoriam, an effort to memorialize homes destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires by painting them from photos and then gifting the works of art to grieving homeowners, she was all in.
“I looked it up and found out what it took to get involved,” Marger recalled. “I signed up right away and started to do [paintings] immediately.”
Homes in Memoriam formed in the days following the January conflagrations, as two women who grew up in Pacific Palisades searched for ways to console community members who’d escaped with little more than the shirts on their backs.
Newport artist Sherry Marger was inspired by an article in the Los Angeles Times describing an effort to collect portraits of homes lost in the Palisades and Eaton fires in January.
(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)
Ashley Miller, who’d lost her family home, was feeling distraught and searching for a way to be of help. She sought to volunteer at relief shelters but was turned away due to an overabundance of helping hands.
“There was this scramble of feeling like I needed to do something but not really knowing what would be helpful or impactful,” the 24-year-old said Thursday.
Miller recalled having received, as a graduation present, a portrait of the house she’d lived in while attending college in Louisiana. What if she could stoke interest among area artists willing to volunteer similar gestures for Los Angeles fire victims?
Ashley Miller, left, and Amy Beemer teamed up after the January wildfires to create a Homes in Memoriam project, where artists captured likenesses of lost homes and gifted them to the owners.
(Courtesy of Ashley Miller)
So on Jan. 9, she went on Instagram seeking to “crowdsource artists’ time, love, and labor to provide those who have lost their homes in the 2025 LA fires something to hold on to,” according to the page’s inaugural post.
The response was swift and, in less than a week, Miller connected with Amy Beemer, whose background in interior design offered wide access to artists and graphic designers. Beemer had started a similar project, and the two decided to combine their resources.
Today, Beemer maintains a master list of requests and artists, while Miller receives and frames the 8×10 works, shipping them out to grateful recipients.
So far, Homes in Memoriam has recorded 686 requests for lost home portraits, 510 of which have been fulfilled and many more works in progress. The project’s Instagram page is a veritable gallery of mid-century charmers, Spanish-style bungalows, Tudor manses and angular contemporary residences.
“We recognize the amount of time and effort and care all our artists have put in,” Miller said of the volunteer painters.
A painting by Newport Beach artist Sherry Marger of a home in Pacific Palisades that reportedly once belonged to actor Anthony Quinn. It was lost to fire in January.
(Courtesy of Sherry Marger)
“They’re working on this around working full-time jobs. For some this has become their full-time purpose. Some artists are in their 70s and retirees, and this has become their third act, something that gives them a lot of purpose at that stage in life.”
These days find Marger busy at work in her Newport Beach in-home studio. Once she accepts a request, she projects the photo onto a light box and traces out its shapes onto watercolor paper.
Even painting just a couple hours each day, due to arthritis in her hands, she manages to finish a portrait in two to three days. Since she began contributing to Homes in Memoriam, the septuagenarian has completed 29 paintings and is finishing up a 30th.
With each piece, she includes her contact information and a note offering to paint a second portrait whenever recipients have settled into their rebuilt homes or a new location.
Artist Sherry Marger has made 30 paintings for the “Homes in Memoriam” project, memorializing homes lost in the L.A. fires.
(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)
Marger said she often feels heartbroken for those who saw everything they’d built and loved over lifetimes disappear in an instant. But, when she receives the occasional note from homeowners glad to have a visual representation of their beloved homes, she knows her art is helping others heal.
One such missive hinted at the impact of Marger’s artful gesture:
“I received the rendering of my home last week and I just can’t thank you enough. It is so perfect — brought my husband and me to tears,” it read. “It will have a place of honor in our new home. We lived there 41 joyful years and this beautiful artwork will help us to never forget. You are very talented and it is so special that you would lend your talents to help fire victims. That is so generous.”
Sherry Marger holds up a painting created for “Homes in Memoriam,” a donation-based art project benefiting those who lost homes in the L.A. wildfires.
(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)
“It brings tears to my eyes,” the Newport Beach artist said of the correspondences. “I can just picture them looking at that and having a pang of sadness. It makes me sad, too — but I’m going to keep going.”
Miller, too, plans to keep the project alive as long as there are requests to be fulfilled, understanding many fire victims still haven’t found a place to land.
“There are many still sitting in that group, where there is too much going on and this was either too overwhelming or still felt too soon,” she said. “This is not a limited time offer.”