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Friendly Universe: The Electric Landscapes of Sharon Ellis
During a fifth grade field trip in 1966, Sharon Ellis’ class shuffled into the San Diego Museum of Art and listened dutifully as a docent told the children why they should admire a painting featuring a...
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Making the Desert Flower: An Alternative Look at Rarely Seen Agnes Pelton...
Editor’s Note: For those wishing to go deeper into Peltonia we’re pleased to present this essay by Jan Rindfleisch. A former director of the Euphrat Museum of Art, Rindfleisch was involved in the...
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Allan McCollum: Mt. Signal and its Sand Spikes
New York artist Allan McCollum was having a run of bad luck. He’d been stiffed by a dealer, lost his studio and racked up his credit cards. Fed up with the commerce of art, he put everything in storage...
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Michael Moore, Carl Chew, Cholla Chairs, Triassic Quilts and More
Inspired by the recent California Desert Art article on Lynda Keeler’s maps, Michael Moore sent some of his own “imaginary topographics”. For decades, the widely exhibited artist has been exploring and...
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Headstone for a Hero: The Quest to Mark Susie Keef Smith’s Grave
Postcards from Mecca is a hero’s journey. Pioneer photographer Susie Keef Smith triumphed over heat, disability and roadless wilderness to document the 1920s desert east of the Salton Sea. But every...
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C.E. “Smitty” Smith and the Glory Days of the Palm Springs Desert Museum
Ed. note: Like many museums in the pandemic era, the Palm Springs Art Museum (formerly Desert Museum) has been struggling of late. When things are wobbly, it often helps to return to bedrock. What did...
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Eric Merrell at La Quinta Museum, a Headstone for Christina Lillian, Farewell...
Eric Merrell shows widely in the West, but soon you’ll have a rare opportunity to see 35 works of the desert master right here in the Coachella Valley. Merrell completed the series of paintings–showing...
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Elaine Horwitch: The Mother of Southwest Pop Takes on Palm Springs
Editor’s note: In the 1980s one of the most influential art dealers in the West decided that Palm Canyon Drive was destined to be an arts district and she was the person to make it happen. To that end,...
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Sylvia Winslow Scouts the Great White Sink
The Pleistocene shorelines that drew Sylvia Winslow are mostly off-limits now behind the gates of the million-plus acre Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. On a recent trip to research Sylvia’s life,...
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Sharon Ellis, California Biennial, Rita Deanin Abbey, Ol’ Paint and More
It seems the desert herself has elected an ambassador and sent her out into the world to represent us. Sharon Ellis–who works quietly in Yucca Valley–has a show, New Works on Paper, at the Kohn Gallery...
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