Artwork Detail

Fire Station 108 serves the region of Santa Clarita and Saugus. The station is located in a residential neighborhood and has a welcoming, home-like feel. Artist Henk Pander created a large-scale oil painting for the entrance lobby and four watercolor paintings for the interior spaces of the station. Pander spent two weeks in residence with the Los Angeles County Fire Department in the summer of 2008. His work is based on drawings and observations he made during his ride-a-longs and his time spent at fire stations. During his residency he took over 600 photos, kept a journal, and created on-site location sketches. After his residency he examined his collected information and chose five images to transform into finished paintings. Pander's four watercolors reflect the intimate feeling in the station's smaller spaces, while the oil painting, showing a heroic helicopter rescue scene, makes a sweeping impact in the larger lobby space.

Born in Haarlem, The Netherlands, Dutch artist Henk Pander was classically educated at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has exhibited his work since the 1960s and has received numerous prominent awards such as the Therese van Duyl Schwarze Portrait Prize. The Portland Fire Bureau chose him to be an artist-in-residence in 2004-2005 and Pander later said that his encounters with the Fire Bureau were some of the most exciting and moving experiences in his career. Pander has written that the residency gave him an insight into “the often very difficult and dangerous work of the men and women firefighters and emergency workers." Pander’s work is in many permanent collections including the Portland Art Museum, Seattle’s Frye Art Museum, and Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.