A tribute to Rick Artes, a carpenter who worked in Malibu for decades, was unveiled on a power pole along PCH last week. Artes was killed near the spot on the highway on Aug. 3, 2018, when a speeding vehicle crossed the center divider and crashed head-on into the truck Artes was driving in with his son.
Coworkers and friends gathered to create the tribute—a maple leaf and a cross with a hammer as the crossbeam.
“We cut this out of some big, thick steel,” longtime friend Nick Schaar described to The Malibu Times. “He was a churchgoing guy, so there’s the cross part, and the hammer is so you know that’s what he did for a living. He was a framer, finished carpenter and exterior finished carpenter. So, we kind of just put it all together and thought that was a nice tribute for him. He was well, well, well loved—one of the nicest people, like a lot of Canadians are, nicest people you’ve ever met, and we’re really sad that he’s gone.”
Schaar added that the maple leaf part of the design was because Artes was born in Canada.
A coworker, Malibu architect Doug Burdge, described Artes as “an incredible guy.”
“I remember him, even after a few years after we did a few jobs with him, he’d text me every holiday and on a birthday, and say, ‘Happy Birthday.’ You know, you don’t really expect that. It’s just Rick just showed what kind of person he was and he was a friend to a heck of a lot of people. And for this accident to happen, it’s just so tragic. We’ll miss him greatly. He was a great guy.”
