a.l.t.^home
gather | create | nourish
Our Vision
a.l.t. ^home is a creative residency and community gathering space in Westmont /Athens / Harbor Gateway North (depending on the map consulted), an unincorporated neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. Founded in March 2021, we are preserving our ancestral home as a cultural archive, illuminating the migration of Black Southern families from Alabama, Louisiana, St. Louis, and Texas during the 1950s and 60s and their subsequent settlement in the Westmont/Athens neighborhood. Building on this legacy, we provide an accessible creative residency studio centering Black, queer artists, archivists, and cultural organizers on the quest for space and time to dream, incubate and grow their ideas, heal, and rest.
Our Legacy
Bernice Grove and H.C. Guyton were born and raised in the small farming town of Millport, AL. They met in elementary school and were later married. In search for opportunity, they migrated to St. Louis in 1953 and had their first and only child, Herbert Charles Guyton, in 1955. In 1961, they migrated to Los Angeles to reunite with Bernice’s parents, Mama Charlie Gray and Papa Henry, and her seven younger siblings, who had moved West the previous year. Here, they raised my father, ancestor Herbert Charles, and, following his passing in 1992, they raised me.
Since my grand//mother’s ancestral transition in 2021, I’ve continued my family’s legacy of building a home that offers respite, inspiration, nourishment, and care. I’ve been working through my family’s 60-year-old archive: dating and labeling photos and exploring options to store them safely; digitizing home movies; and, cataloging letters, receipts, memorabilia, Jet & Ebony magazines, and several greeting cards. All these memories capture a crucial layer of Los Angeles Black history – the story of many families who followed a dream across the nation to provide safety, security, and liberation to their heirs.
Our Name
My grandmother once shared that when they first viewed the house on Menlo Avenue, she noticed a big tree in the backyard and it reminded her of the farm she grew up on in Millport, AL. Today, a lemon tree sits in the backyard, and thus, our name, a.l.t., stands for at the lemon tree, an acknowledgment of the land that first attracted my grandparents here and which they tilled and planted seeds that continue to blossom today.
We gather, we create, we nourish - all at the lemon tree.
H.C., Bernice, & Herbert Charles Guyton
Grandchildren of Mama Charlie Gray Grove gather in the living room of a.l.t.//home ~ 1977
H.C., Bernice, & Herbert Charles Guyton pose in the front lawn of a.l.t.//home ~ 1968
