California Desert Art by Ann Japenga

Gunnar Widforss: Painter of the National Parks Joins the Smoketree School

Alan Petersen — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:51:37 +0000

Ed. note: Desert artist, museum curator and former Colorado river guide Alan Petersen is seeking work by Gunnar Widforss for a new book. Please see the end of his article for details and a link to Alan’s own work.

Swedish-American watercolor artist Gunnar Widforss (1879 – 1934) worked in the California desert around Palm Springs and in the Coachella Valley from 1922 through 1933.

Gunnar Widforss, Desert Palms With Mountains. Courtesy Biltmore Galleries.

Widforss arrived in the United States from Sweden in January 1921. By that time he had made a career and established himself as a well-respected painter in Europe. There he had focused his activity along the French Côte d’Azur and the Swiss and Austrian Alps where he painted at popular tourist destinations known for their scenic beauty.

In January 1921 after arriving by train in Los Angeles Widforss, following his pattern of work, sought local tourist destinations where he might paint and make some sales. His first painting location was Mount Lowe where he spent several days and produced a number of paintings. He then traveled to Catalina Island where he spent most of February and sold some paintings to William Wrigley Jr. He returned to the mainland and made his way up the California coast to Carmel and eventually on to Yosemite Valley where he arrived in March 1921.

Gunnar Widforss in Asilomar 1925, by Albert DeRome

Widforss is celebrated for his paintings of Yosemite and Grand Canyon and became well-known as the “Painter of the National Parks.” After 1926 he made the South Rim of Grand Canyon his home but he continued to paint in California and could often be found in the desert during the winter months. He enjoyed painting around Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, often staying at the Indio Hotel.

Gunnar Widforss, San Jacinto

He liked the desert environment and had spent six weeks in 1920 painting in Tunisia. He also regularly worked in the Phoenix area. Given his interest in desert subjects it is somewhat of a paradox that Widforss only painted in Death Valley twice in 1933. He exhibited regularly in San Francisco at Gumps and in Los Angeles at the Stendhal Gallery. He also exhibited with the California Watercolor Society and in 1928 won first prize at their annual exhibition for a painting of the Sierra Nevada.

Gunnar Widforss was a master of the watercolor medium. As may be seen in his Desert Palms and Mountains his work is characterized by accurate drawing and clear, brilliant light and color.

Alan Petersen, Curator of Fine Art at the Museum of Northern Arizona, is writing a book on Widforss’ life and art as well as compiling a catalogue raisonné of his work. Currently, he has more than 900 works listed. If you own any paintings by Gunnar Widforss or have information on his life and career Petersen would appreciate hearing from you. For more information you can visit: www.gunnarwidforss.org.

For Alan Petersen’s artwork see:

http://www.apetersenpaintings.com/

Alan Petersen, Canyonland

Four Days, Fifteen Artists, Death Valley

Jim Trolinger — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:58:55 +0000

In March, 2012, after 40 years of enjoying visits and painting Death Valley, I brought in reinforcements in the form of eight artist friends to help me capture the beauty of this magical place.

Marsha Rebstock, Artist Palette

The paint-out led me to publish Painting Death Valley to inspire other artists to take up the challenge. The outcome was so rewarding that a return in March 2013 was virtually a no-brainer. I returned this time with 12 friends and two photographers to document the event.

The new book, Painting in Death Valley Again (excerpts below) complements the first and is largely about the artists and their creations during the 2013 trip. While it is intended as a stand-alone document, useful information and photographs for artists reside in the first book and are not repeated here.

Boasting over three million acres and 130 miles long, Death Valley is the largest National Park in the contiguous USA. Great painting venues include ghost towns, canyons, sand dunes, outdoor museums, abandoned mines, and vast, colorful mountain ranges. These scenes exhibit foregrounds, middle grounds, and backgrounds containing interesting shapes, contrasts of hue and value, atmospheric perspective, horizontals and orthogonals, and places for a focus, all of which artists can choose to enhance, minimize or abstract. If you like people in your paintings, capture the occasional tourist in your field of view. What more could a plein air painter ask for?

Artists worked in a variety of media and styles including watercolor, oil, acrylics, pastel, charcoal, pen and ink, charcoal, and graphite, plus mixed media. Styles ranged from representational to abstract.

All works were painted on location. The artists below are just a few of the talented painters represented. You can also see the work this month (May 2013) at Location 1980 gallery in Costa Mesa.

Robin Theron, Zabriskie Sphynx: I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I am in love with the West and the desert so Death Valley (in the spring and fall) is like Nirvana to me.

Jim Trolinger, Artist Palette: I began painting at the age of 7 and never stopped. My career as a scientist has given me the opportunity to paint in 36 different countries, and Death Valley is still my favorite place to paint.

Steven Seizo Nakamura: Death Valley is an experience to behold, a diary of cause and effect. It is a deeply integrated daunting scenery and magnificent geological record. The test as a painter is how to document such incredible beauty with rapid alterations of light.

Chris Weber, Natural Bridge: Death Valley is magical to me. It’s truly a timeless place if you don’t look at any evidence of civilization. I felt very connected to the beauty of the earth’s turbulent history while painting in such a varied landscape.

Sharon Rawlins, Left Behind: A place of incredible scenery…. Ancient. Other worldly. Unvarnished. And starkly beautiful. An overwhelming variety of shapes and textures and patterns complemented by wonderfully nuanced colors, it is at once a daunting challenge and satisfying experience. And the night sky is beyond beautiful.

Teresa Rooney, Natural Bridge. The silence. The vast open space. The drama of light and shadow moving across the landscape. Capturing the feeling on canvas, documenting my adventures in a language that goes beyond words, that’s where I find pleasure.

Scott Ludwig, Artist Palette: Death Valley sunsets are among the most beautiful in the world; they paint a palette with boundaries that stop only at the horizons of ones imagination.

To view or order the book send $45 plus $5 shipping to Jim Trolinger. Jtrolinger@metrolasreinc.com

Also, this month (May, 2013) see the Death Valley paintings at Jesse Fortune’s Location 1980 gallery in Costa Mesa. http://www.location1980.com/

For more on author and artist Jim Trolinger see: http://www.worldsworsttourist.com/

Artist Laureate, by Steven Nakamura. A portrait of Jim Trolinger at Zabriskie Point.

Stephen Willard’s Mammoth Lakes Gallery Reopening

Ann Japenga — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:38:05 +0000

Portland art dealers Robert and Sue Joki were looking for an encore career to crown 25 years of success in the gallery business. They found their opening courtesy of the early Palm Springs photographer Stephen Willard. In May, 2013, the couple will reopen Willard’s Mammoth Lakes cabin and studio as a center for Sierra and Yosemite art.

While Mammoth is not exactly smoke tree territory, the new Gallery at Twin Lakes is great news for followers of desert art. In California, the desert artists overlap with mountain artists, just as the mountains and deserts themselves overlap. Follow a desert artist long enough and you’re bound to wind up at the Devils Postpile; Sierra artists lead you back to Palm Canyon.

I caught up with Robert and Sue Joki (pronounced Yo-kee) on their annual visit to Palm Springs. They’re usually here to barter desert paintings, but this time they were laying the groundwork for the new gallery. Sue added a vintage cowboy hat to her gallery wardrobe courtesy of collector Marty Newman. Robert enlisted Terry Masters and other desert artists to be part of a Sierra-Palm Springs artists exchange. And they visited the Palm Springs Art Museum archives to learn all they could about Stephen Willard.

Willard set up shop in Palm Springs in 1922. His wife Beatrice ran the little-known Palm Canyon Trading Post art gallery (where the Indian Canyons trading post is today), featuring sketches by Carl Eytel and other pioneering artists.

Willard later built a studio on the site of the current day Moorten Botanical Garden. For 58 years he roamed the desert and mountains, becoming known for his hand-painted postcards made from his black and white photos. He sold his work through the influential Desert Inn Gallery, and began spending summers at his cabin in Mammoth Lakes.

The Gallery at Twin Lakes in winter and summer. All photos courtesy of Robert and Sue Joki.

By 1947, Palm Springs was growing and the verbena was disappearing. Feeling crowded, Willard permanently decamped to his small home and art gallery at Twin Lakes. Anyone who has cross-country skied the closed Lake Mary Road has passed this snow-buried retreat.

Willard died in 1965. In 1999, his daughter Dr. Beatrice Willard donated his collected work—glass and film negatives, personal papers, maps and memorabilia—to the Palm Springs Art Museum (then the Palm Springs Desert Museum). In 2001 the museum staged a major exhibit on Willard, helping to bring him back into public view.

Now Willard is getting another big break, as Robert and Sue Joki devote their considerable skills to promoting the artist and his fellow adventurers who painted the Sierra.

Carl Sammons, Lake in Eastern Sierra

Yosemite attracted the Hudson River School painters, giants like Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and Thomas Hill. Places like Mono Lake and Mammoth Lakes were less accessible and less-often painted. But the true California landscape devotees made their way nonetheless.

The earliest piece the Jokis will feature is a 1860s painting by Enoch Wood Perry, who traveled with Bierstadt. Other early artists include Harry Cassie Best (father-in-law of Ansel Adams), and Harry’s brother Arthur Best, along with Paul Grimm, Carl Sammons, Paul Lauritz and Mary Nimmo Moran, wife of Thomas Moran.

The Jokis Bring Energy and Knowledge to the Task

Robert Joki is a towering fellow of roaring enthusiasms—he races Indy cars, cage-fights UFC style and raises urban chickens and bees. His Sovereign Collection art gallery, across the street from the Portland Art Museum, specialized in early 20^th Century American and European art, as well as Northwest regional art. “All art is regional art in a way,” says Robert. “In a manner of speaking Van Gogh was a regional artist.”

Sue Joki worked in advertising at the Oregonian newspaper. She grew up in La Canada, spending family vacations at Woods Lodge on one of Mammoth’s lakes. When the couple, now in their 50s, began thinking of a second-act career, Mammoth was a natural draw. “After 25 years with the gallery, it’s time to do something else while we’re still young enough to do it,” says Robert.

They worked out a special use agreement with the US Forest Service to operate the old Willard cabin, adjacent to the site of the 1860s mining town, Mammoth City. Their gallery season will be short as the cabin is often covered with snow. During tourist season they’ll feature historic 19^th and early 20^th century artwork of the eastern Sierra and Yosemite. They’ll live on site in season and show visitors Willard’s Real Photo postcards that he once sold through the gallery, and also his hand-colored photos of nearby places TJ Lake, the Forest Chapel, the Devils Postpile, the old Lake Mary Store, Hot Creek geyser and more.

The Gallery at Twin Lakes, interior

Willard pioneered the paint-on-photo technique and was as skilled as major landscape painters. “This has to be considered fine art,” Joki says.

The Jokis will also feature contemporary landscape artists and plan to offer an artist’s residency, once they restore an old miner’s cabin on the property.

This all sounds like a lot of work for an encore career, until you hear the couple describe how they imagine their days. First they’ll shed their modern trappings and live like 1930s pioneers, down to their wardrobes. “Sue has about 300 pairs of shoes she’ll trade for boots,” Robert says.

Sue plans to begin her days hunting wildflowers with an old-fashioned camera with real film. Robert envisions getting up early to fish at TJ Lake. He’ll fry up the trout on the old stove, and then prop up the “Open” sign when he feels like it. “If we’re there we’re open,” he says. “We’re not going to limit our happiness.”

For news on the Gallery at Twin Lakes watch for the new gallery website:

www.TheGalleryatTwinLakes.com

And visit the Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/TheGalleryAtTwinLakes?ref=stream

Etching by Mary Nimmo Moran

Grace Hall Hemingway’s Painting Tour of the Southwest

John E. Sanford — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:16:06 +0000

Ed. Note: In a coup for the Smoketree School, we’ve discovered that Grace Hall Hemingway, mother of Ernest, painted scenes around the Imperial Valley, Death Valley and the Coachella Valley. Here her grandson, John E. Sanford, looks at Grace’s late-in-life painting career.

In Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway reveals himself to be as much an aficionado of painting as he had been of bullfighting and hunting. At least twenty painter’s names are sprinkled throughout the text from Bosch to Toulouse-Lautrec. It is no surprise that Thomas Hudson, the protagonist of Islands, is a painter.

Also a painter was Ernest’s mother, Grace Hall Hemingway. As a younger woman she was an operatic singer, a voice teacher and a composer. Then, at age 52, she took up painting. At that time, Ernest was age 25 and a recently published writer living in Paris with his wife (Hadley) and son (Bumby).

Just a year after Grace started painting; her husband wrote to Ernest and mentioned Grace’s art. Ernest replied on March 25, 1925, “I’m very glad Mother is painting. I would be awfully interested to see them. If she has any of them photographed I wish she would send me some of the reproductions.”

In February 1927, Ernest wrote to his mother, “Thank you very much for sending me the catalogue of the Marshall Field exhibit with the reproduction of your painting of the Blacksmith Shop in it. It looks very lovely and I should have liked to see the original.”

In September 1928, Grace gave a “Studio Tea” at the Hemingway family home at 600 North Kenilworth and had an Exhibition of Western Landscapes. The catalogue for that exhibit lists 42 paintings, most of which are Western scenes. Other locations mentioned are northern Michigan, Florida and North Carolina.

Grace Hall Hemingway with a painting she did of Ernest based on a Man Ray photo. Her choice of the almost saintly depiction of her son shows great pride in him and his accomplishments. Despite all the disparaging comments that Ernest later made about his mother, his choice of a painter as the occupation for the protagonist in one of his final novels may suggest his grudging admiration of her choice of painting for her late career.

In The Hemingway Women, Bernice Kert writes that after Clarence Hemingway’s death in December 1928, Grace used the money from the sale of her paintings to pay the taxes on her Kenilworth home. In a frequently told story, the next year, at her son’s request, Grace sent Clarence’s suicide revolver to Ernest. The gun went in a carton that “contained a chocolate cake, some cookies, a book for Bumby and a roll of Grace’s two best canvases of desert scenes, whose safety was her greatest concern. (Italics added for emphasis.) She could not bear to think of losing the paintings and reminded Ernest of her dream that at least one find its way to a Paris salon.”

Recently, Grace’s youngest daughter, Carol Hemingway Gardner, wrote, “I remember when she (Grace) first joined the painting class. Her mother (Caroline Hancock Hall) had painted all her life, but Gracie was only interested in music the first part of her life. When my mother took an interest in something, she went all out. She spent hours copying paintings at the Art Institute in Chicago and many more hours at home. She really did nothing but paint after my father’s death. She also gave talks and played the piano, turning paintings into music.”

In an interview in the April 1937 issue of Artistry Magazine, Grace claimed to have painted over 600 pictures. Edna Sellroe, the author of the article, goes on to say, “The quality of her work has admitted her paintings to the Art Institute of Chicago, prominent galleries, and club exhibits, as well as a showing at the Century of Progress. In addition to this, Mrs. Hemingway has held “one man shows” under the auspices of the All-Illinois Society of Fine Arts, Austin, Oak Park and River Forest Art League and in exhibits at Tulsa, Oklahoma, Santa Fe, New Mexico and the larger cities of California, Kansas, Illinois and Michigan. In 1934 some of her pictures were exhibited in Paris, France.”

An art critic is quoted in the same article as saying, “The reason for Mrs. Hemingway’s universal appeal as a painter is, that she has the interpretation of the old masters combined with the technique of the moderns.” Unfortunately, the art critic (Adah Robinson) did not develop this theme and we are left to wonder if Grace’s paintings would fit in the category of Impressionistic painting – “a single instant of sensory experience” or in the more realistic mode that is traditionally the label applied to Winslow Homer.

In a 1949 newspaper interview, Grace explained how she got started in painting back in 1924. “She joined a painting class ‘just to be a good fellow because the group needed entry fees to bring a teacher from New York.’” The article goes on to say, “The instructor stopped at her easel the first day, studied her work and her gray hair, and expressed surprise she not discovered a bent for painting before. At 60 she learned to drive and headed West to paint the desert.”

No people are shown in the Taos street but their activities are evident from the furrows in the dirt road and in the simple adobe buildings. At first glance, you see only a picturesque country scene. Looking deeper, you can see poverty and a struggle to survive. In the beauty of the scene, Grace shows a dignity in that struggle just as Ernest showed a dignity in Santiago’s poverty and his struggle to survive in The Old Man and the Sea

Grace says, “I framed the picture in the front windshield, backing the car or maneuvering to left or right to get an artistic grouping of mountains in the background.” Then she goes on to say that she moved to the back seat with her canvas, brushes and easel, “I worked in comfort.”

What she didn’t say was that she was terrified of bugs and snakes, detested the bright sun and felt safer in the back seat of her car than out on the ground while she painted desert scenes. (The author’s recollections from childhood conversations with Marcelline Hemingway Sanford.)

In an article in the Hemingway Review, Margaret Booker states that in 1928 Grace traveled to the Southwest with her brother Leicester who drove her into the desert to paint landscapes. Her notes for an art talk on October 1928 ignore that trip but describe what modernist painters are trying to accomplish. Grace began, “Modernists hold that a picture, to be a great work of art, need not contain any recognizable objects, provided it gives the sensation of rhythmically balanced form in three dimensions, it will have accomplished all that the greatest masters of art have ever striven for.”

Nine years later on August 24, 1937 on the island of Nantucket, Grace gave a lecture to an informal club called The Neighbors. The subject was Travel and Painting in the Great Southwest and she illustrated her talk with her own paintings. Her notes to that talk refer to her joy of traveling alone. (One wonders if her 1928 trip with her brother had been a total success.) Grace says, “But I hold a brief for driving alone, if you are a painter. That seat beside you holds your palette full of fresh paint, and your steering wheel makes a good easel.” In those lecture notes is a reference to leaving Chicago on November 1 and heading for Kansas City “in a deluge of rain and oh how I love driving in the rain. You feel so secure and safe in your little car, while the windshield wiper ticks off the miles.”

Grace Hall Hemingway exhibition catalog

That trip took her on to Salina, Kansas for a short stop where she visited the home and studio of Berger Sandsen (Sven Birger Sandzen, 1871-1954), “a most unusual painter, who uses raw color, laid on in ridges and gets a thrilling effect. He is called ‘God’s gift to the paint manufacturers.’”

Her route took her to the dangerous Raton Pass just outside Trinidad, Colorado and on to Taos, New Mexico where she commented, “If you ask me, I think Taos is greatly over rated and commercialized to the last degree.” Nevertheless she enjoyed the artists there, painted several pictures and “stumbled on some story material for my son, Ernest.”

Grace Hall Hemingway’s lecture notes from her 1936-37 Southwest trip.

On the same trip she went on to Santa Fe, Gallup and then attended a Navajo Indian nine-day and night dancing ceremony of healing, stopped at Grand Canyon, Phoenix, the Imperial Valley of California and Death Valley “where it poured for three days and nights,” “the floor of the Valley was like a lake.” She comments about Nevada, “(they) never had prohibition. Paid off (the) Federal officers. Gambling runs wide open. It is …Uncle Sam’s naughty boy.”

Before heading home she “painted along the Coast, as far as Carmel and the cypress trees on the 17 Mile Drive.” She took the southern route home and “encountered two sandstorms in Texas, one of which was at night in Amarillo, Texas.” She ended her talk by saying, “It was a grand experience! I hope you will all do it some day.”

There is no mention by Grace in her interviews or in her lecture notes of her own painting heritage. Grace’s mother, Caroline Hancock Hall, was a fine painter. Among Caroline’s many works were her small oils, done on cardboard, of scenes in Iowa where she grew up and of Nantucket where she later summered, which lined the dining room walls of the Hemingway home in Oak Park. I have inherited one of those. I call it, “Stream in Dyersville.”

Grace Hall Hemingway, Death Valley

Before her death in 1951, I visited Grace several times at her home on Keystone Avenue in River Forest. My last visit was in about 1946 and I have strong memory of the house and studio filled to overflowing with her paintings. She was proud of them and they were hung two and three high on all the walls. They were almost like her babies and she hated to part with them. I never dreamed that one day I would go to many of the same places in the Southwest that she had painted nor would I own a small collection of her Michigan and Nantucket paintings.

Another significant omission is that Grace signed her paintings “Hall Hemingway” not Grace Hemingway or Grace Hall Hemingway. My mother told me that Grace used her maiden name “Hall” because she felt that women were discriminated against in the art world and by using a stronger first name, she would command a better price for her work. In my judgment, there was another reason.

Grace’s husband, Clarence Hemingway, had a younger sister with the same name, Grace Hemingway. That Grace Hemingway had already established herself as a nationally known lecturer and performer specializing in telling children’s classic stories in costume. By signing “Hall” as her first name, there could be no confusion about who was the painter in the Hemingway family. Like Ernest, Grace had a strong sense of her place in posterity.

At her death, Grace’s will provided that each of her children receive several paintings. Ernest was designated to receive three:”Sandy Shore,” “Cloudy Sky,” and “Shore Scene.” Each was valued at $20. (Grace’s will in Florida records.) Ernest’s second son, Patrick, recently told me that he recalled inheriting some of Grace’s paintings but in all of Patrick’s movings, they have disappeared.

In her lifetime, Grace did sell several of her paintings and also gave several to friends. During the depression she sold one for $500, which in today’s dollars would be $3-4,000. The grand-daughter of a close friend of Grace had one of Grace’s paintings appraised in the 1970’s and was told that if it were signed by Grace it would worth $10,000 to $15,000. However, when I asked Sotheby’s in 1998 to appraise my collection, I was told that there was no established market and therefore they could give no appraised value.

When I give talks juxtaposing text from Ernest with paintings by Grace, I do not mean to imply that there was any direct connection between his writing and her art. Rather, I feel there was a strong emotional connection between mother and son. Both shared an interest in the arts, in music, in travel and in the redeeming qualities of creative work. Both could be stubborn in the belief of their own opinions, filled with pride, vanity and self-importance.

Ernest’s famous definition of courage, “Grace under pressure,” brings to mind some words of his mother. She once wrote, “The haunting specter of fear must be gagged, tied and thrown out of our lives in order that we may climb the steps of creative work and accomplish what our souls yearn for. The only thing in life that gives real happiness is creative work because that is partnership with the Great Creator.”

Grace could equally well have been writing about her fear of failure as a painter in 1924, or the fear of living alone as a widow under the extreme financial distress that she faced after the suicide of her husband in 1928 or her fear of driving alone across the country in the late autumn of 1936. (Just imagine, she had to deal with narrow, poorly paved two-lane roads, a car without a radio, air-conditioning or windshield washers and she was a driver with no mechanical ability and no background of motor maintenance.) Grace was certainly under a lot of pressure but thanks, in part, to the generosity of Ernest and Pauline in setting up a trust fund for her, she overcame her fears and moved forward to a creative life through painting and lecturing.

A version of this paper first appeared in the North Dakota Quarterly, Fall 2003, Vol. 70. No. 4.

The Smoketree Artists’ Historic Home Tour

Ann Japenga — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:11:58 +0000

This article first appeared in Palm Springs Life, Winter/Spring 2013

Any Palm Springs visitor can board a bus and tour Liberace’s pad. With only a little more effort, you can see the view that inspired mystical visions from Agnes Pelton’s back porch or the Cathedral City home where R. Brownell McGrew came to love the desert so much he was later dubbed Rembrandt Under a Smoketree.

Axel Linus’ painting of his Snow Creek home and studio, 1941

Some of California’s greatest artists once lived in the Coachella Valley. More and more, art lovers are recognizing the power artists’ former homes and environs hold in telling the story of American art. As Jamie Wyeth, son of Andrew Wyeth and grandson of N.C. Wyeth, told Preservation magazine in 2011, “[Historic homesteads] absorb the lives of the people who’ve lived and worked in them. You can’t help but learn when you visit.”

In New York’s Hudson River region, the fascination has spurred a new trail highlighting the homesteads of Hudson River School painters. Elsewhere, museums and foundations are buying artists’ homes and opening them to visitors. The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios sites receive more than 600,000 visitors annually.

If Hudson River and Taos artists are better known than our homegrown painters, that’s partly because the Coachella Valley just missed its chance at being identified as a major arts center. The desert attracted major artists in the late 1920s when something flashier came along: the movies. Hollywood overshadowed — but did not erase — the booming art scene. Thus, we have celebrity home tours and not artist home tours.

When you follow the Smoketree Art Trail, you’ll see the area was as packed with talent as Laguna Beach, Santa Fe, or Carmel. There are no brochures or podcasts; you’ll have to supply the imagination to envision what it was like before today’s residential and commercial development. In some cases, the structures have been razed (John Hilton’s Art and Gem Shop, for instance), but the sites retain their magic.

Trailing the Smoketree School

The Smoketree Art Trail makes a large loop starting at Snow Creek and proceeding through the valley to Thermal and the Salton Sea, returning by way of Desert Hot Springs. The houses cluster in places with the most pleasing geography. Snow Creek — where Axel Linus lived and died — was and is a favorite of artists because of its world-class view of San Jacinto’s north face. Cathedral City was a favorite locale because of its expansive predevelopment views.

Enthusiasts are honing in on an exact address for Sam Hyde Harris in Cathedral City. And did Clyde Forsythe ever build a home on his acreage near Coral Mountain in La Quinta? Many undiscovered desert artists are being written back into history, and contemporary desert artists may one day join them on the map.

Bear in mind that many of these sites are private residences, so please pick up the artists’ vibes from a respectful distance.

AXEL LINUS
15958 Hicks Lane, Snow Creek

Born in Sweden, Linus studied at art academies in Stockholm and Paris. He had a studio and home in Snow Creek for more than 40 years, until his death in 1980.

Axel Linus (standing) courtesy of Palm Springs Historical Society

VICTOR THALL
15996 Cottonwood Road, Snow Creek

Thall was an Abstract Expressionist painter in New York; he worked with Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky. Leaving the East Coast scene before it became an international sensation, he moved to Snow Creek in 1969 and died there in 1983.

PAUL GRIMM
526 S. Calle Palo Fierro, Palm Springs

Grimm had a studio in downtown Palm Springs at 428 N. Palm Canyon Drive (the building is gone now). He built this ranch house in 1935. Grimm painted Hollywood movie sets before becoming a desert painter known for his mastery of sunlight and rolling clouds.

Paul Grimm home by Mark Davidson

JOHN FROST
Tahquitz Canyon Way and Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs

One of Palm Springs’ earliest painters, Frost is the subject of a forthcoming book from the Irvine Museum. The classic French Impressionist had a studio at Nellie Coffman’s Desert Inn on the northwest corner of this crossroads. Frost died of tuberculosis at age 46.

EARL STENDAHL
928 Avenida Palmas, Palm Springs

The most important California art dealer of the day, Stendahl spent winters in the Movie Colony home later known as the Cary Grant house. Many major artists were lured to the desert by the Stendahl connection.

GORDON COUTTS
257 S. Patencio Road, Palm Springs

Scottish painter Coutts built the Moroccan villa known as Dar Marroc in 1924. Today it’s the Korakia Pensione. Coutts entertained fabled guests like Winston Churchill (who painted here), Grant Wood, Agnes Pelton, and Nicolai Fechin, who lived up the street.

JOHN PAUL BURNHAM
147 S. Tahquitz Drive, Palm Springs

Burnham was better known as a patron to other artists. His circa-1927 Spanish compound is up against the hillside by the Tennis Club. It’s now a vacation rental known as Colony 29. Nicolai Fechin lived in an adjoining studio when he was in town.

ALSON SKINNER CLARK
147 S. Tahquitz Drive, Palm Springs

Clark had a home and studio in the complex that is now part of Colony 29, making this hillside a nexus of local art history. A friend of Guy Rose, Clark was a masterful Impressionist known for murals and desert scenes. Living here in the early 1920s, he was lulled to sleep at night by the sound of water in Tahquitz Creek. The creek has been diverted and no longer sings to artists at this location.

NICOLAI FECHIN
147 S. Tahquitz Drive, Palm Springs

The work of this Russian-born painter known for his portraits and Southwest landscapes brings record prices at auctions today. His former home in Taos now houses the Taos Art Museum. One of his residences in the 1920s and ’30s was a studio adjacent to the John Burnham house.

STEPHEN WILLARD
1701 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs

Best known as a Palm Springs photographer, Willard also was a desert landscape painter. A resident beginning in 1922, he lived in the Spanish house that is now part of Moorten Botanical Garden.

CARL EYTEL
701 W. Baristo Road, Palm Springs

This hermit artist embodied the pure spirit of nomadic desert painters and inspired just about everyone who came after him. Arriving in town in 1903, he lived in a shack above the pool area where the Tennis Club and Spencer’s restaurant are today.

RACHEL DEBRABANT
982 Avenida Palmas, Palm Springs

DeBrabant lived in this 1929 Spanish colonial revival in the Movie Colony. She and her brother Marius were wealthy collectors and art patrons. Paul Grimm created a painting of the courtyard. Hanson Puthuff set up his easel in the living room.

Paul Grimm painting of DeBrabant courtyard, owned by Noma Bruton

VAL SAMUELSON
68489 Grandview Ave., Cathedral City

Desert artist and former art director of Palm Springs Villager magazine (predecessor to Palm Springs Life), Samuelson was ahead of the curve locally in experimenting with abstraction in landscape. His widow, Marian Samuelson, recently moved out of the house.

MARJORIE REED
East Palm Canyon and Cathedral Canyon drives, Cathedral City

The popular Western artist known for her paintings of the Butterfield stagecoach sometimes signed her work “Harvey Day.” Around 1950, she lived in a cabin behind a defunct Cathedral City date shack called the Pink Burro. According to her daughter, Judy Morris, Reed painted a mural around the walls of the restaurant. The Pink Burro was in the neighborhood where the Desert IMAX Theatre and City Hall are today.

AGNES PELTON
68680 F St., Cathedral City

The transcendent landscape painter is often compared to Georgia O’Keeffe. She came to town in 1932, when Cathedral City only had 100 residents, and had this home built for her. The address was originally on E street. Her home was recently purchased by L.A. photographers Peter Palladino and Simeon Den, who are working to preserve the home and Pelton’s legacy.

Agnes Pelton home by Mark Davidson

WILTON MCCOY
68415 Treasure Trail, Cathedral City

This mountain and desert landscape painter studied with renowned California artist Sam Hyde Harris. He moved here in 1947 and wrote a popular instructional guide, “Painting the Desert,” still used by painters today.

R. BROWNELL MCGREW
32202 Rancho Vista Drive, Cathedral City

This highly valued Western artist lived here in the 1950s. Known for his nearly psychedelic renderings of Navajo Indians, the artist later lived in La Quinta. McGrew designed and built the studio with a long north-facing window behind the house. At first, he preferred to paint the Sierras and didn’t like the desert at all. But his time here changed that.

SAM HYDE HARRIS
Address unknown, Cathedral City

The celebrated California painter often visited Cathedral City in the 1940s and stayed at a resort called Svenska. His later desert paintings were influenced by his friend Jimmy Swinnerton. His biographer, Maurine St. Gaudens, says Harris had a home in Cathedral City.

Sam Hyde Harris painting of the Svenska resort in Cathedral City

JIMMY SWINNERTON
72638 Pitahaya St., Palm Desert

The most famous of the desert artists, Swinnerton came to the region to recuperate from tuberculosis. In 1907, he lived at the Sidewinder Shebang, a cottage at Nellie Coffman’s Desert Inn, and spent his last years in this house, puttering in the rock garden. He died in Palm Desert in 1974.

Jimmy Swinnerton at home in Palm Desert, courtesy Palm Springs Historical Society

BILL BENDER
47900 Portola Ave., Palm Desert

The desert and cowboy artist (also a working cowboy) camped under an Ironwood tree where The Living Desert Zoo & Botanical Garden is today, while his teacher and boss (Bender was Jimmy Swinnerton’s chauffeur) stayed in hotels. Bender still paints at his home in Victorville.

CARL BRAY
77685 Highway 111, Indian Wells

The desert’s favorite folk artist and self-proclaimed Painter of the Smoketree built his home by hand with railroad ties and stones from Berdoo Canyon. The city of Indian Wells demolished the popular roadside attraction in 2010, leaving nothing but a wide spot in the lawn beside the bike path.

FRED CHISNALL
Point Happy, Highway 111 and Washington Street, La Quinta

This nomadic artist sold his work from the back of his camper, often parked along Highway 111 near Point Happy. He was a friend of John Hilton and died of a lingering illness in the guest room at Carl Bray’s Indian Wells gallery.

FRED GRAYSON SAYRE
Avenue 59 and Highway 111, Thermal

While recovering from diphtheria, Sayre stayed for long periods on the date farm belonging to his cousin Ben Laflin. The location is the old Laflin ranch, where Oasis Date Gardens is today. From the ranch, Sayre made trips to the Salton Sea, a frequent subject of his paintings. The house where Sayre stayed still stands.

JOHN HILTON
Highway 86 and Avenue 66, Thermal

Hilton ran an art and gem shop across from Valerie Jean Dates at Valerie Jean Corners. The art shop has been torn down; but if you look across the street from Valerie Jean (still standing but closed to business), you can imagine the days when this out-of-the-way corner hosted some of the biggest artists in California, including Clyde Forsythe, Jimmy Swinnerton, and Maynard Dixon.

ED AINSWORTH
Highway 111 and Palm Island Drive, Mecca

Los Angeles Times’ newspaperman Ed Ainsworth (Painters of the Desert author) was the figurehead of an artists’ salon along the north shore of the Salton Sea. John Hilton, Jimmy Swinnerton, Clyde Forsythe, Orpha Klinker, Bill Bender, and others came to dance by tiki lights and soak in nearby hot springs. Some of the houses in Ainsworth’s development are still here.

CABOT YERXA
67616 E. Desert View Ave., Desert Hot Springs

Yerxa is less known as an artist than as a homesteader (he came to Desert Hot Springs in 1913). But he started drawing as a boy and later studied at the Academie Julian in Paris (in 1925). Yerxa began building this Hopi-inspired pueblo in 1941 and continued working on it until his death in 1965. Now open to the public as Cabot’s Pueblo Museum, this site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

BURT PROCTER
East Desert View Avenue, Desert Hot Springs

This Western artist purchased land next to Yerxa’s and camped there with his family. Daughter Ginny Bohannan remembers going out looking for UFOs with Yerxa and his wife, Portia. Procter is known for his paintings of cowboys, Navajo Indians, and Western landscapes.

Millicent Harvey: A Boston Transplant Befriends the Smoke Tree

Ann Japenga — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:28:44 +0000

I’ve pondered smoke trees more than most people, but over lunch with Millicent Harvey–a recent transplant from Boston to Palm Springs—I quickly realized I was the novice listening to a teacher far more experienced on the subject.

The smoke tree is that silvery plant inhabiting our desert washes. For much of the year it’s dormant and gray. Most people never notice it, or if they do they assume it’s dead wood. Then, once a year, it erupts in reckless beauty with a profusion of indigo blooms.

At any time of year, the early desert artists were able to glimpse the hidden shimmer behind the gray branches. It was the late Indian Wells artist Carl Bray who told me the smoke tree reminded him of people dancing. I christened the Smoketree School after Bray and the other desert artists who found inspiration in the seemingly mundane. (The tree is spelled as two words; the school as one.)

Millicent (known to her friends as Missy) has become so familiar with the trees in Araby wash she knows when the bloom peaks and how quickly it falls off: “It really goes fast.” She even recognizes youngsters and elders, and told me where the senior trees hang out–where Araby road crosses the wash.

Millicent Harvey

This is one of those lucky occurrences wherein a desert novice shows us more about the place we’ve been living all along. Looking at Millicent’s smoke tree photos on her website, it’s like you’re on that defunct Disneyland ride where you shrink to microscopic proportion and enter the life of a snowflake–atoms and electrons dashing around you. In Millicent’s work, you venture into the interior world of the smoke tree. Dense black-and-white tree-beings fill the frame with anatomical details–like the veins and capillaries of the circulatory system. Some viewers say her black-and-white photos look like they’re made on infrared film.

Following her work in sequence, you forge on into a wintry dead-looking smoke tree woodland; follow a path through the smoke tree woods, then burst upon explosions of color. The smoke tree gains stature before your eyes. Suddenly the humble shrub is as profound as the great redwood.

Millicent’s journey began–I’m happy to say–with a chance encounter with an early Smoketree School painting by Larry Sitter. She moved to Palm Springs two years ago, looking for a change from Boston where she’d grown up with seven siblings. She had been briefly acquainted with the desert while attending the Tucson Museum of Art School in 1977, but then her focus shifted east again as she took classes at the Art Institute of Boston and taught at the New England School of Photography. She built a commercial photography career working for magazines, publishers and corporations, and is especially known for her landscape architecture work with the Boston-based firm Reed Hilderbrand.

The California desert was new to her when she moved here, but visiting the Palm Springs Historical Society museum one day, she noticed a Larry Sitter painting of a smoke tree on the wall. Soon after that she saw her first Agnes Pelton smoke tree at the Palm Springs Art Museum

The photographer was no stranger to plant life. She had closely observed the eastern variety at a public garden near her former home in Boston. But what was this peculiar tree-shrub in the Sitter and Pelton paintings? “Something about it felt familiar to me,” she says. “I just wanted to go see what they look like.”

Many of us might have consulted a botanist or Wikipedia, but instead Millicent—sharing the nomadic impulse of the early desert artists—went wandering down the washes. She stalked smoke trees in places such as the Art Smith Trail in Palm Desert and the Living Desert but kept returning to the Araby Wash near her home. This is one world-class wash with its protective rock wall, the distant mountain vista, and the puffs of dust and tang of manure courtesy of horses at the nearby Smoketree stables. “My favorite still is Araby,” Millicent says.

Araby Wash by Millicent Harvey

By returning again and again to the wash, Millicent got to know the smoke tree at all seasons, all times of day. Her first year in Palm Springs she only caught the tail end of the indigo bloom in mid-June. “This year I went crazy,” she says.

The brilliant purple splashes on the ground remind her of cherry blossom carpets in the east. “When they’re blooming, of course, the smoke trees are covered with bees,” she adds. “You’re treading in someone else’s territory.”

She noticed that the crowns stay blue while the lower branches start to go grey and dormant. “Something is shifting. Each one of the trees has its own little character,” Millicent adds.

Her photography mentor Nubar Alexanian gave her tree photographs the highest compliment when he said simply: “You LOVE what you’re looking at.”

She’s also earned the respect of longtime smoke tree observer and painter Terry Masters. “These photos don’t happen just by getting out of your car by the side of the road,” says Masters, owner of the new Desert Painter Gallery at 370 N. Palm Canyon in Palm Springs. “There is great deal of pokin’ around and pointing that camera involved. Her eye for the subject will inspire many in the future and become their gateway in. Not to mention that her work provides a kick in the butt for this painter.”

It’s always a challenge making connections in a new town, but when this east-coast newcomer wandered into Araby wash she crashed the right party, Terry Masters says. “She’s made a fast friend of the smoke tree.”

For more on Millicent Harvey: http://www.millicentharvey.com/

Sharing Death Valley with Artist Friends

Jim Trolinger — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:15:00 +0000

Ed. note: Jim Trolinger’s new book Painting in Death Valley is a must for desert artists and their fans. See ordering info at the end of the article.

After 40 years of visiting and painting Death Valley I still enjoy returning to this magnificent place. Boasting over three million acres and 130 miles long, it is the largest National Park in the contiguous USA. Amazingly, in all those visits I have never encountered other artists. A Google search for Death Valley artists turns up a meager two or three, even though the park service offers an artist-in-residence program. The Fall 2011 issue of American Artist magazine calls Death Valley the national park least discovered by artists.

Jim Trolinger

In March, 2012, I shared Death Valley with 8 of my artist friends during a four-day paint out to see if they would develop the same passions as mine. To my amazement, only one of these widely traveled adventurers had seen Death Valley, and none of them had thought of it as a good choice for plein air painting. They absolutely loved it, and now I am working on a plan for a return in February, 2013.

By the end of the paint-out, I realized that the planning, the experiences, and the paintings we created could serve as both an inspiration and a guide for other plein air painters, who, for whatever reason, have never painted in Death Valley. So I published “Painting in Death Valley”, a 50 page book, which suggests methods, venues, and subjects, includes 30 paintings created by eight artists, and photographs of some of the best locations. The objective was to provide inspiration, guidance, ideas, tips, and information to help other artists quickly find their own approach to painting Death Valley.
There are three hotels in Death Valley, one at Stovepipe Wells and two at Furnace Creek, with camp grounds available at both places. Furnace Creek Ranch, where we stayed, is set in an oasis surrounded by a date palm forest. It has great services, a wonderful outdoor museum, is close to the visitor’s center, and itself offers many painting subjects. They even offer a senior discount, which will save you enough money to pay for your food at one of their great restaurants.

Great painting venues include ghost towns, canyons, sand dunes, outdoor museums, abandoned mines, and vast, colorful mountain ranges. These scenes exhibit foregrounds, middle grounds, and backgrounds containing interesting shapes, contrasts of hue and value, atmospheric perspective, horizontals and orthogonals, and places for a focus, all of which artists can choose to enhance, minimize or abstract. If you like people in your paintings, capture the occasional tourist in your field of view. What more could a plein air painter ask for?
A wealth of information on these and other Death Valley sites is available at various websites given below, and the book includes photos, details, and paintings of some of the best, including the best times of day, where to find shade, and even where to find toilets.

Artist Drive

Sundown favors many good venues, but my favorite is Artist Palette half way along the 7 mile one way Artist Drive that leaves the valley floor. Different minerals in the soil make the landscape appear like an artist palette with reds, purples, greens, and yellows. We set up easels about an hour and a half before sunset, with some artists facing towards and some away from the palette itself.

Artist Palette an hour before sundown.

Artist Palette by Jesse Fortune

Jesse Fortune

In the absence of clouds, the sun is so bright that the colors appear subtle, almost bleached on one’s retina. As the sun begins its descent behind the mountains on the west side of the valley, a shadow moves slowly up the field of view (visible in the figure). As the shadow covers more and more of the field of view, eyes gain sensitivity to color, and rich colors begin to develop in the shadowed foreground. Suddenly, colors that were very subtle explode, and the lighting becomes more dynamic and dramatic. Finally, when all but the last peak is in shadow, that peak becomes an intense gold cone behind saturated colors in the foreground. One’s brain oscillates between the desire to stare in awe and ecstasy and the desire to paint.

Costa Mesa artist Jesse Fortune created a large acrylic painting on a wood panel on an easel specially designed for the paint-out. His paintings were done mostly with a palette knife and sometimes applied directly from the tube to the board. Jesse created quite an attraction for gawkers who enjoyed watching him dance around his painting as he worked. Jesse sold all six paintings he created in Death Valley within a few weeks after the paint-out.

Costa Mesa artist Sharon Rawlins painting Artist Palette Canyon

Artist Palette Canyon by Sharon Rawlins

Back at Furnace Creek Ranch, we had our first daily critique in the Corkscrew Saloon over margaritas, herding up enough tables to display our paintings for all to see. Everyone felt energized by the challenge of painting Artist Palette with the rapidly changing color and shadow combinations. “You start painting something and when you have the colors just right, the entire color scheme changes! I just discovered how varied and beautiful the color brown can be.”
An artist does not even have to leave the ranch to find delightful painting scenes.

Artist Palette by Ruth Merkle

Some artists began the morning by walking through the outdoor Borax Museum with a sketchpad and sketching stage coaches from a previous era. This is also a good place to paint in the middle of the day.

Artist Susan Ballou couldn’t resist painting in the outdoor Borax Museum.

I sat in the front of the Ranch and painted the colorful mountains to the east.

Mountains East of Furnace Creek Ranch by Jim Trolinger

The Mesquite Sand Dunes

The sand dunes offer a prime venue for plein air painting, and the best time is early morning, like really early, when the air is cool, and the sand is still virgin, clean swept by the night winds, and covered with critter tracks from night activities. An eerie morning calm greeted us at Mesquite Sand Dunes, where quiet, still, and beautiful surroundings had just light enough to make walking easy. A magnificent display of colorful clouds lit the sky over the east mountains. We couldn’t have asked for a better morning.

Mesquite Sand Dunes just after sunrise

As painters searched out a good spot, I could hear excited voices on all sides, amazed at the sky, the emerging mountain ranges, the sand dunes themselves. Within a few minutes easels went up in front of a variety of scenes, ready for the sun, which now was peeking over the mountains to the east and casting long shadows everywhere. The far distant mountains produced the perfect background with remarkable atmospheric perspective to add to the challenge.

Mesquite Sand Dunes at Sunrise by Jim Trolinger

Jim Trolinger

Mesquite Sand Dunes by Marianne Flynn

Mesquite Sand Dunes by Susan Ballou

Mesquite Sand Dunes by Anne Wilson

Jesse’s Mesquite by Jesse Fortune

Dante’s View

Looking north from Dante’s View on a typical day.

No photo will ever capture this view; here you discover the epitome of what plein air painting is all about. Sitting amongst the rocks as a wind shield, looking out across the valley, with a gentle and usually cold breeze, birds soaring beneath, provides the very quiet, perfect place to meditate and paint. The snowcapped Telescope Peak rises above a parched valley, and a hundred miles to the north mountains fade into a clear blue sky. The white salt rivers below wind amongst every color in the rainbow. A painting done here contains a kind of excitement that is not possible in any photograph or painting taken from a photograph.

You just have to be here. I am never ready to leave this spot, and I only leave after promising myself that I will return some day. Not every day is a painting day at Dante’s view since it can be severely cold with high winds.

An artist can paint this view from a comfortable rock sheltered position, shielded from cold winds and bright sun. Notice also the foreground, middle ground and background from which to choose. Because of the available panorama, good lighting exists all day in some direction. Notice the range of shapes, shadows, and colors, which are constantly changing with time. Few tourists make the effort to climb to the peak, which is accessible by a good path. Be prepared with a warm jacket and a thermos of hot coffee, even when temperatures soar in the valley.

Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point is as close to perfect as a plein air painter could ask for.

Artists at work at Zabriskie Point shielded by the viewing platform wall.

Zabriskie Point by Susan Ballou

Zabriskie Point by Marianne Flynn

Zabriskie Point by Sharon Rawlins

Zabriskie Point by Jesse Fortune

Zabriskie Point by Anne Wilson

Zabriskie Point by Jim Trolinger

Painting in the canyons presents one of the greatest challenges to simplify. The typical wall comprises a cornucopia of colors shapes, and details that are likely to be interesting only to the painter himself. The challenge is to design an artistic composition using the subject for inspiration without being a slave to it. These scenes are subjects to inspire abstract art. This is definitely a place to practice simplification. A skilled artist can figure out what to leave out, not what to put in.

Jim Painting in Mosaic Canyon by Sharon Rawlins

Natural Bridge by Jim Trolinger. A beautiful view of distant mountains is framed in the window formed by the arch and the canyon. The dynamic range of a conventional camera is not sufficiently wide to record what can be seen and painted by an artist. Notice a few cooperative tourists.

We had critiques at the end of each day during which artists discussed challenges and inspirations, sharing both problems and ideas, learning from each other. Suggestions proved extremely valuable, and in a few cases, paintings that appeared as “nice” tuned into dynamite with just minor adjustments.

Artist critiques in the Hotel Room.

As we prepared to make the five hour drive home, I reflected on the previous four days of art and felt that I had done something worthwhile. I had observed that each of the artists had developed a passion for painting Death Valley that rivaled my own. Every single artist was expressing his desire to return to Death Valley next year, especially if we came as a group. That, alone, made the trip worthwhile for me.

References:
1. http://www.escapetodeathvalley.com/artist-in-residence
2. http://janetmorgan.net/deathvalley2006.html
3. http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ca/randsburg.html
4. http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ca/skidoo.html,
5. http://gocalifornia.about.com/od/cadeathvalley/ig/Death-Valley-Photo-Tour/
6.http://www.worldsworsttourist.com
7. http://www.artandadventures.com/travel/death_valley.html
8. http://www.rhyolitesite.com/index.html
9. http://www.goldwellmuseum.org/index.html
10.http://wintersteel.homestead.com/Rhyolite.html

Author Contact: jtrolinger@metrolaserinc.com

You can receive a free preview or purchase a copy of the book Painting in Death Valley by sending a request to the author using the email provided above. 50 pages, 8.5”x11”, 37 photographs, 30 paintings – $25 plus $5 shipping.

The New Naturalists: Borrego Landscape Painters

Ann Japenga — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:01:27 +0000

Ed. Note: This article first appeared in the Fall, 2012, issue of The Sand Paper, the newsletter of the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association.

If you meet a woman in Surprise Canyon who can name 40 different wildflowers, or a man in rapture over the strata of the Wind Canyon cliffs, you might mistake them for scientists. But in fact these are contemporary landscape artists Kirsten Anderson and Victor Schiro.

Victor Schiro, Wind Canyon Cliffs

Any wash or slot around Borrego these days is likely to harbor an artist. They’re part of the statewide revival of landscape painting, spurred in part by the renewed vigor of the prestigious 100-year-old California Art Club.

The current crop of Borrego painters follows in the distinguished steps of early landscape masters who painted here–Maurice Braun, Charles Reiffel, Marjorie Reed and Edith Purer, also California’s first woman ecologist.

With the explosion of outdoor painting and the opening of a major new gallery by the Borrego Art Institute this winter, Borrego seems destined to be an arts destination. Local collector Jim Anderson says Borrego has everything it needs—isolation, iconic scenery, artists—to draw art fans. “We should definitely promote it as an artist’s retreat, like Bisbee (the eclectic mining town in Arizona),” he says.

For painters, the desert is one of the “California classic” essentials to be mastered, along with the Sierras and the coast. Like traditional naturalists, landscape painters bring intense observation to their study of the desert. As Victor Schiro says: “I do this for no other reason than to record the natural world.”

For Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association members, getting to know the local artists and their styles can be as rewarding as getting to know the names of 40 wildflowers. For every “known” painter there are ten discoveries waiting to be made. Due to space limitations, only a few of the best contemporary painters are profiled here.

How do you decide who is good? That’s the fun part as there are few experts. You have as much chance as anyone of finding the next Maurice Braun. Shannon O’Dunn, owner of O’Dunn Fine Art in La Mesa, says what you should look for is “a soul connection, a reverence.”

Carol Lindemulder

Lindemulder moved to Borrego Springs in 2007 after the Fallbrook fire destroyed her home and four years of accumulated artwork. Following the fire, she faced hip surgery, nearly died from anesthesia and was in serious need of a refuge. “I think I need a womb,” she said.

So she and her dog moved to Borrego Springs. Her paintings contain human traces such as trailers, roads, housing tracts and agricultural fields. She is especially taken with the trailer communities of Ocotillo Wells. Still, she says, “I consider myself basically a landscape painter—we all live in the landscape.”

It was a good day for the Borrego arts community when Lindemulder moved to town, as the painter supports her fellow artists and brings a sophisticated presence to the local scene. She would be right at home at any urban art opening, yet she’s a true desert rat who even appreciates the annoying desert wind. As she wrote in a poem, she loves the sound of “sticks and rattles and bones.”

Carol Lindemulder, Sky Watching Borrego Sunrise

Victor Schiro

Schiro discovered the Mojave desert as a toddler, romping across 120 acres his uncle owned. He studied art at California Institute of the Arts and exhibited his work widely as a modern painter. Later, while working as a producer and writer in the movie industry in LA, he developed a love for California history and the early exploration artists who toted sketchpads to uncharted places. When he took up traditional landscape painting he says he did it “for the same reason those guys did it.” Experiencing a place is paramount for him; painting it is secondary.

The Camarillo-based artist has been expeditioning in Borrego in recent years in his 4-wheel Land Cruiser, with his beagle and Jack Russell as crew. He plans to spend the next few years concentrating on the region—the rocks, crystals, geology and landscape. When he paints the Wind Cliffs, you can feel the grit. He once wrote about his quest for precision in his paintings: “If I buried a doubloon there, I’d want you to be able to find it.”

Geoffrey Stone

Stone belongs to an exclusive subset—artists who actually grew up in Borrego Springs. “The whole park was my playground,” he says. The Brawley-born artist moved to town at age four. His late mother, Barbara, and father Herb were both schoolteachers. Geoffrey’s grandmother, Catherine Stone, was a watercolor painter who took him on painting trips. “I would splash the paint around,” he says. She was always looking at the “long vistas” and instilled the same habit in him. (Catherine and her husband, Joe, were active in ABDNHA; Joe edited The Sand Paper for years.)

Geoffrey later worked as a State Park aide and also studied animation and illustration at San Jose Sate University, where he earned an MFA. Defying recent trends, he is not big fan of painting outside. He jokes that “plein air” is French for: “Painting outside while wearing a big hat and ignoring tourists who want to come up to you while you’re desperately trying to determine the correct shade of blue….”

Look for Geoffrey Stone to take desert art in unexpected directions as he is now working on a study of Borrego life and residents, inspired by his background in illustration and animation.

Kirsten Anderson

Anderson has a demanding job as a radiation therapist, competing in outrigger canoe races in her spare time. She’s lived in Alaska and rafted all over Utah. Formerly married to a desert tortoise researcher, she has read widely in Chemeheuvi Indian and desert history. “I am a renaissance person who likes to paint,” she says.

Based in Long Beach, Anderson has attended the Borrego Plein Air Invitational three times. Her subjects include iconic landscape features such as Palm Canyon and Indian Head—but also airstream trailers and roadside motels. Like most of the artists featured here, she’s dedicated to conserving the lands she paints. “Contemporary plein air painting is about recording the landscape before it’s built on or torn down,” she says.

Watch this artist in the future for her brainy, ceaselessly reaching paintings incorporating her wide interests in history, mythology, environment, science and nature.

Kirsten Anderson, Borrego Landmark

Barbara Nickerson

Director of the Borrego Art Institute, Nickerson lives part-time in Borrego Springs. In the hot months she’s found with husband Jul aboard their yacht, Sounder, in the Pacific Northwest. Working in Sumi and watercolor, Nickerson has painted classic Borrego subjects such as Font’s Point, the mudhill formation called the Elephant’s Knees and the resident comedic ravens. She brings texture, contemplation and a primeval feeling to any subject she tackles.

Nickerson, who has a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, is teaching a class in Gravity Painting this season. If you’re a budding desert artist, sign up and learn to work with paint that moves in a landscape—some would say—that moves as well.

Barbara Nickerson, Canyon Raven

Mark Kerckhoff

Kerckhoff and the next artist profiled, Eric Merrell, are active members of the influential California Art Club. Both teachers as well as painters, they are introducing new landscape artists to Borrego and influencing others with their distinctive styles.

A sixth generation Californian based in San Juan Capistrano, Kerckhoff is known for his elegant abstract realist landscapes. He likes to make a solo camp along the Borrego-Salton Seaway and paint “the best arroyos in the low desert for color and design”. A true naturalist-artist he can tell where he is by the color of the sand (a pink cast means he’s near the Arizona border). Kerckhoff likes working in the Arroyo Salado, Truckhaven Rocks and Palo Verde washes and a place he christened “Blistered Lip Arroyo” in honor of his own parched lips.

Mark Kerckhoff, Borrego Badlands

Eric Merrell

Merrell is the historian for the California Art Club and is increasingly well-known around the state as an envoy for California art. A desert aficionado, he has completed an artist’s residency in Joshua Tree, and participated in an exhibit of Salton Sea painters, “Valley of the Ancient Lake”. He came to Borrego Springs for the first time recently as a judge for the Plein Air Invitational sponsored by the Borrego Art Institute. It was an immersion experience as the young artist was stuck in the sand at Coachwhip Canyon, impaled by a cholla on the Earth Narrows Trail and soaked up Borrego ghost stories about a driverless stagecoach each evening.

He aims to return soon to visit the Pumpkin Patch and the Ocotillo Wells region. Until then, Merrell and the other highly-regarded artists featured here are Borrego’s best ambassadors–exporting images of this lesser-known desert region to LA art circles and the world.

Eric Merrell, Carrizo Salt Plains

The Desert Art Dynasty of John and Kathi Hilton

Ann Japenga — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 23:24:21 +0000

The painter Kathi Hilton Garvin, art dealer Dan Rohlfing and I had just finished dinner at the 29 Palms Inn. The sky was turning pink then blue, like a Technicolor Hilton painting, when Dan suggested that we try to find John Hilton’s old 29 Palms homestead, playhouse to movie stars and desert artists.

Kathi Hilton’s Storm’s Promise, courtesy of Blue Coyote Gallery

As we crammed into my Subaru, I wasn’t so sure about this plan. It was getting dark and no one really knew where we were going except that it was out in nowhere. Dan, co-owner of Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery on the Sonoma coast, had never been to 29 Palms and Kathi—a former resident–hadn’t been back for 30 years.

We turned off Amboy Road onto a dirt track; the lights of the old five-acre homesteads were far between. The street signs were sandblasted and unreadable, even when I aimed the headlights directly at them–and Kathi didn’t remember the street names anyway.

We blundered along for awhile, until a dark structure loomed ahead on a hillside. Kathi said: “Pull in here by this row of trees.” A strange orange moon was rising over “the loneliest little house on a hill,” as John Hilton once described it. The place now looked like a scary tweakers’ den with shredded toys and junk strewn everywhere.

Kathi pointed and said: Here was my dad’s garden. Here was the mineral water pool where James Cagney came to swim; here was the studio where I painted when I lived here. Sometimes my dad’s friends flew in and there were two Lear jets parked on the landing strip out back.

Kathi Hilton at a reception in 29 Palms, Courtesy of Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery.

The three of us sat in silence. I made a U-turn on the old airstrip and drove back to town, awed by this glimpse into the mythic life of the first family of desert painters. Kathi—who now lives in Roosevelt, Utah–deserves to be written about without mention of her dad on occasion. She has an art career all her own. At Dan’s Bodega Bay gallery, co-owned by his wife Linda Sorensen, customers often prefer Kathi’s pastoral paintings over the work of John Hilton. Still, you can hardly talk about one without the other.

The Hiltons shared a devotion to the palette knife, a love of pink skies and a heaping of family lore and myth. Names like Agnes Pelton, Clyde Forsythe, Maynard Dixon, Nicolai Fechin and Bill Bender weave in and out of John’s life and Kathi’s childhood memories.

Like many stories of dads and daughters, this one has its share of sorrows. While John Hilton gave Kathi a calling and a name, he also abandoned the family when she was young and did not always encourage her art. When she entered a poster contest as a young woman he remarked: “It’s good, Kathi, but you really can’t draw.”

Kathi Hilton, age 4

This sometimes-difficult dad also happens to be the best-known of the desert artists, not just for his paintings but also for his shtick. Hilton’s early years spent in China with missionary parents infused him with a love of the exotic, and he later mined the themes of old souls, reincarnation, and the occult to win audiences.

The man mined calcite in Borrego, captured Gila monsters in Baja, sang in Cahuilla and had a poltergeist named Felica. (“Felica was my friend too,” says Kathi.) His story is told by Katherine Ainsworth in The Man Who Captured Sunshine with the tall tales left unchallenged.

One such tale: Hilton was friends with Cathedral City’s Agnes Pelton, but he was no fan of abstraction in art. To make his point, he once painted a gag Pelton, slapped on the title Cosmic Metamorphosis, and sold it instantly for $350 (or so he said.)

In another bit of stock showmanship, Hilton held a ceremony each year in which he burned his rejected paintings in a big bonfire in Box Canyon. The bonfire routine was not unique to Hilton but was practiced by other theatrical painters such as Tucson’s Ted de Grazia.

Born in North Dakota, Hilton first came to Valerie Jean corner in Thermal in 1931. Valerie Jean’s was the famous date shop where old Route 86 meets Ave. 66. Hilton opened his gem and art shop across the street. The ruins of the gemshop were leveled a few years ago; the date shop building still stands.

Hilton’s first wife was Eunice, a nurse. The couple’s daughter Kathi–named after Katherine Ainsworth, Hilton’s biographer and wife of newspaperman Ed Ainsworth–was born in a Mecca doctor’s office in 1939 and spent her early years in the art and gem shop amidst Chuckwallas, geodes and magnetic rocks.

Her brother, John Philip Hilton, also an artist, died as a young man. Kathi was born into a perpetual party. An early photo taken at the Thermal home and gem shop shows her mom and dad seated on the bed and presiding over an artists’ party. Is that Maynard Dixon in the corner with the black hat? Kathi says she doesn’t know. Dixon was on the scene at the time, but she was just a kid and often hid under the bed while famous painters sang along to John’s guitar.

John Hilton with guitar, Eunice Hilton (with dark-hair) seated on bed at the Thermal art and gem shop.

Of her father’s friend Maynard Dixon all she remembers is: “I loved his voice.” She remembers Clyde Forsythe as the man who brought her peppermint candy. Marjorie Reed was her sometimes-baby sitter. And, yes, for all you desert art gossips, her dad did have a fling with the legendary stagecoach painter.

The PT Barnum of California art, John palled around with guys like Zane Grey, President Dwight Eisenhower (a fellow painter) and General George Patton and was always going off hunting mummies or on other adventures with LA Times reporter Ed Ainsworth.

Hilton’s career was helped along by Ainsworth, author of the classic on the Smoketree School, Painters of the Desert. Hilton supplied the stories Ainsworth needed and in turn Ainsworth gave Hilton and friends ink.

Hilton was also championed by Harriet Day, the influential director of the Desert Inn art gallery and later the Desert Magazine gallery in Palm Desert. (A neighbor of Agnes Pelton, Day also once ran a curio shop and sold Carl Eytel sketches in Palm Springs’ Indian Canyons.)

Kathi and her grandmother Hilton in 29 Palms

Hilton moved out of the family home when Kathi was nine; he and Eunice divorced when Kathi was twelve. She didn’t see her father for four years until she showed up unannounced at a show he had at the Palm Springs Museum. His absence had to hurt, but Kathi was stoic as she told the story over dinner in 29 Palms.

Hilton moved to 29 Palms in 1951 after the divorce, choosing the remote town as a place to regroup. He met and married Barbara Hollinger, and became the founding president of the 29 Palms Art Guild and a founder of the 29 Palms Gallery.

The 29 Palms Gallery building, courtesy of 29 Palms Historical Society.

Meanwhile Kathi’s youth was itinerant. She went to school briefly in Alamos, Mexico; her dad wrote about those years in his Sonora Sketchbook. She attended the bohemian Desert Sun School in Idyllwild, then a private school in Sherman Oaks, made a foray into modeling in Beverly Hills and took classes at UCLA.

John’s party life continued. There was always revelry going on at the new house in 29 Palms, and though Kathi became friendly with Barbara, she was on the periphery of the scene.

Only after moving to 29 Palms did Kathi finally become a painter herself, despite her dad’s initial discouragement. She was 30 years old at the time and recent spinal surgery had left her immobile and dispirited. Her friend Ute Mark encouraged her to paint.

Kathi Hilton, center, with Ute Mark, left and Mary Jane Binge, in 29 Palms, 1970.

Lee Lukes Pickering–author of Colorful Illusion, a valuable history of the 29 Palms art guild–helped her with colors and convinced her to change her name to Kathi with an “I”. “There’s a lot of Kathy’s out there,” Pickering advised.

When she began painting Kathi found mixing colors came easily to her, a genetic gift. Her paintings, made with palette knife, oils and fossil wax, looked remarkably like her father’s. “We found out we had the same mind’s eye,” she says proudly.

Kathi’s very first show was at the 29 Palms Gallery in 1970. Her father sent orchids and antheriums from Maui, where he was living at the time. While initially the senior Hilton had not welcomed her foray into art, he now began to appear in father-daughter shows with her. They even sometimes worked on the same canvas together: a Hilton-Hilton.

After Barbara died in 1976, Hilton charmed a waitress named Janna. Kathi recalls her dad carried gemstones from his gem-collecting days in his pocket and used them to woo women. Yet Janna, Hilton’s new wife, was an unfortunate choice. “She didn’t understand who he was,” says Kathi. When Hilton died in 1983, she discarded his files, photos and letters, a complete history of the Smoketree School of desert art.

Bill Bender, a respected desert artist who lives in Victorville, has mixed memories of John Hilton. He sometimes annoyed his friends with his swagger and tendency to hog the spotlight. Yet he brought the impoverished painters needed attention. Painting landscapes is not inherently newsworthy so the desert artists needed a promoter. Hilton was it.

When Bender invited John to Manila and Guam as part of the US Air Force artists program, John took credit for the trip. “As long as he was on stage he was happy,” Bender says. “Still we remained friends right down to the bitter end.”

Kathi Hilton moved to northwestern Utah in the late 1970s and moved into a geodesic dome with her husband, Boyce Garvin. She showed her work widely in the West, exhibiting with the Death Valley 49ers and the Women Artists of the West, among others. Boyce died in 2007; Kathi still lives and paints in the dome.

Kathi Hilton, Enchanted Desert, courtesy Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery

When Kathi returned to 29 Palms recently after decades away, it was like the reunion scene from the Wizard of Oz. She held court in the adobe gallery–scene of her very first show–surrounded by her small bronzes of yucca and palms, her own paintings, and a few of John’s. The walls were lush with images of verbena, dunes and smoke trees glowing nearly white.

A parade of indistinct faces approached Kathi. Her smiles dawned slowly as she recognized people from the past. In a greeting typical of others, 29 Palms historian Pat Rimmington said to the artist: “I haven’t seen you for 100 years!”

Along with people from the early days, there were many new devotees who hold the name “Hilton” in near-reverence. Gary Cardiff of Palm Desert asked Kathi to sign his books on the early painters, and also purchased three of her paintings. He told her his grandmother, Pearl “Mona” Stuart, worked in the Desert Magazine gallery, one of the places John Hilton got his start.

As Kathi greeted well-wishers in the crowded room, her father was never far from anyone’s mind. There are photos and a bust of her dad, done by Cyria Henderson of Palm Desert, in the gallery hallway. Even John’s remains are here. When Hilton died Kathi flew her dad’s ashes back home and placed them in a compartment under the bust.

It took many years for Kathi to comes to grips with a disjointed childhood and the overpowering influence of the Man who Captured Sunshine, but in the end the sunshine on display in 29 Palms belonged to her alone. As Desert Magazine said in 1978: “Kathi creates a luminosity of her own.”

For more on Kathi and John Hilton see these gallery sites:

http://bodegabayheritagegallery.com/Hilton_Kathi_.htm

http://www.bluecoyotegallery.com/JohnHiltonOriginalArtandPaintings.htm

John and Kathi Hilton in a father-daughter show at Saddleback College.

Shirley Burman and Richard Steinheimer: A Desert Date on “Mars”

Shirley Burman Steinheimer — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:49:56 +0000

Climbing the dunes, wondering what was on the other side–it turned out to be me, or at least my shadow.

Ed. Note: California Desert Art is honored to present one of the great untold romances of the desert. Staged in a crater near Amboy, Shirley Burman Steinheimer’s story tells of her first desert date with Richard Steinheimer. Her late husband was one of the legendary railroad photographers of all time and is often called the Ansel Adams of Railroad Photography. Shirley is also an accomplished railroad photographer and has advanced the story of women in railroading through her research and writing.

Folks are drawn to the desert for many reasons — study nature, employed by the State or Federal Parks trying to preserve it, to prospect, or even hide from the law. I was none of the mentioned. In the mid-1970s, I was a novice desert visitor itching to go back to touch, photograph and take in the ambiance. In 1977, the opportunity came; a photography workshop in the Mojave Desert near the Kelso Dunes area and I hung out there in the Spring for three years.

I had at last found heaven, but also there was a bonus, Union Pacific’s railroad depot at Kelso. In 1978, I had just been hired by California State Parks to photograph the construction of a new railroad museum being built in Sacramento and the restoration of all the railroad equipment.

Former Union Pacific Railroad Depot, Kelso, 1978

So I had a natural curiosity about the depot and the trains that stopped there. Thank heavens the State did not hire me for my knowledge of railroads as I had little then.

Dick Steinheimer with his drooping camera bag photographing another sunset.

At Kelso, I watched trains and workers in action, but that is another whole story. This is about the desert, but more importantly–my future. At the same time I was in Mojave, there was another photographer, Richard Steinheimer, who was roaming the same desert but photographing the Santa Fe that followed close to Route 66. Our paths never crossed the three years I took the workshops and then my desert journeys ended, at least for a while.

The sunset near Amboy makes a perfect backdrop for a Santa Fe freight.

The next few years I was busy working for the State’s new museum. However, not forgetting my wonderful days in the desert and wishing I could find a kindred spirit, who also liked hanging in the desert, and if lucky, also liked photography. I lived and worked in Sacramento; the chances of meeting someone who filled the bill was like counting the grains of sand in one of the sand dunes I photographed—not likely to happen.

But on April 15,1983, everything changed. The California State Railroad Museum–now opened–held a reception for a railroad photographer, Richard Steinheimer, who had a new exhibit on display. As the evening wore on I noticed every time I looked up Mr. Steinheimer seemed to be looking my way. We spoke several times that evening and I was surprised to find we had many common interests. At the close of the reception, he invited me to join him and others for dinner. I couldn’t go. So, we exchanged business cards and he said he’d call. My first thought as I floated on air going home was I’d probably never hear from him. At the time of our meeting, I was not aware of his reputation as an internationally known railroad photographer; all I felt was my heart racing when he spoke. There was such a kindness in his baritone voice and a gentle manner, all 6 ft. 6 inches of him. You could say I was smitten and I didn’t think that was possible, being a 49-year-old divorcee.

Imagine my surprise to find a call from him on my answering machine just 2 days later. I returned his call that evening not knowing that he had already started writing a letter to me. We must have talked for 2 hours. He finished his letter anyway and to my surprise mailed it, a treasure I still hold dear.

He wrote the following:

“Hello, again. Fun to talk with you. You actually sound too good to be true. Come on, now, who else loves the desert, trains, photography and sleeping out??? A rare, and for me, a delightful combination.

My life is typically unstructured, so I shouldn’t have any trouble much with preconceptions of getting to know you. Its always fun to see how the “movie” of life rolls on with its usually delightful surprises. Things work out for the best…”

–Stein

An eastbound Santa Fe moves through a field of wildflowers, soon to climb Ash Hill and then to Amboy.

Our mutual interests immediately brought us together and for the next month we saw each other frequently, commuting between Mt.View, his home near San Jose, CA, and mine in Sacramento. In early June 1983, we made plans to drive to the Mojave to explore and photograph trains. Dick’s primary focus was railroads whereas my interests were more eclectic, which explains the following excerpt in a letter he wrote to a friend several years later about our “photography styles”. These observations I’d say applied immediately after we started traveling together.

I was tracking a Santa Fe train while Dick was tracking me.

Dick wrote:

“. . . we still greatly treasure the often-arduous long distance photo trips we make on assignments for clients or for stock pictures . . . Our personal approaches to photography could hardly be more different.

Shirley approaches our photography trips from a relaxed vacation viewpoint. She seeks to enjoy the few comforts of travel she can find between the times she is taken by me to an endless number of unheard of, remote, off-the-edge-of-the-world railroad locations where she will have no preconceived idea of what to expect or photograph. Or any idea of where she is. Making it more confusing, we often arrive on locations at night, ready to shoot at first light.

One of Shirley’s native talents is that she quickly adapts to such situations by imitating a space traveler fallen onto a strange planet. With no… ideas or knowledge of where she is, she simply starts exploring around the vehicle—working outward in her search for new subjects of interest. The pictures she makes at these times are almost always original and interesting, images that illuminate the details of a location a normal person would not see…”

Finding out that I was a “space” traveler, it should be no surprise to learn that on our first desert date, we landed in a crater! Driving west along old Route 66 from Amboy, close to the Santa Fe rail line, Dick pulled off the paved road, the van bumping along over a dirt road dodging rocks and bushes and finally stopping at the collapsed side of a small volcanic crater and he said, “ Here’s where we’ll spend the night!”

My first reaction—“HERE?”

My first desert night was spent in this lovely volcano.

“Ok, I thought, I like adventure, wherever it takes me.”

Before pulling into our ‘lodging,’ for the night, I remembered it had been a good day and I was lucky enough to “capture a few trains,” challenging new subjects from my usual fare. I know dusk is a great time to photograph, but I was ready to unwind after an arduous first day. I arranged my sleeping bag on the mattress Dick had flopped down in the back of the van.

Before the sunset we watched a few passing trains…

…and more trains, seen from the crater.

We sat on the rear of the van watching passing trains for a while and Dick, a born storyteller began to spin his yarns; the first of many was about our desert lodging.

“Shirley, did you know that Amboy and the desert we are “camped” in is the lowest and hottest portion of the Mojave crossing between Needles and Barstow? But more importantly, that the NASA Mariner I & II, in 1976 sent back information about Mars soil samples finding later that soil tests performed on Mars indicated that the volcanic soil of nearby Amboy Crater was the most similar on earth to that of the Red Planet.”

“Wow, my first desert date and I’m sleeping on Mars! I’d better remember to take a souvenir rock as a reminder of this date!”

Without missing a beat, the story telling goes on. Next it was about friends seeing black towers of swirling mating termites near a dump site in Twenty-Nine Palms then next I’m hearing about the time an elephant pulled a stuck truck out of the sand near Amboy. I was ready to call it a day and said “goodnight!”

I climbed into my sack and since it was a warm evening he left the rear doors slightly ajar to catch a desert breeze where our heads rested. Thinking back after years of traveling with Dick, I think he wanted to listen for the throbbing noises of locomotives westbound going up the grade to Ash Hill, while eastbound trains dynamic braking made a whining and screeching noise going down hill.

No critters or space aliens bothered us during the night and only a few freight trains passing in the distance broke the night’s silence.

As the morning’s first light of dawn drifted in through the cracked open rear doors, I felt moisture on my face and realized it was sweat. The sun was peeking over the Bristol Mountains and the temperature was moving up and fast. Dick was still sound asleep so I got up and decided to explore around the small crater rim while waiting for him to awaken.

A wide angle view from atop our crater rim, in the a.m.

But he kept on sleeping and I kept on sweating. Finally, I gingerly woke him up and he responded with a few grunts and grumbles that surprised me. Thinking: “There goes the happy ending to finding my Prince!” However, I had to assert myself at that point and managed to blurt out that I was miserable and did not want to have a heat stroke while waiting for him to get up.

Steinheimer gets one last photo from our crater, before leaving for Amboy.

After photographing another passing train, we climbed into the front seat and drove away from our crater and back onto the highway, passing a hitchhiker that I wouldn’t let Dick pick up and he was mad all over again.

I began to doubt my sanity about going off to no-man’s land with a man I’d only known about 5 weeks. The desert sun can do strange things to you, such as make you think you’ll disappear and never be seen again. “What do I do if Dick goes stir crazy from the heat?” Momentary thoughts darted through my head. Luckily we were only a short distance from the cafe. I reminded myself that he had a sterling reputation. However, there was a slight chill in the air and not much conversation as we drove the mile or two to Roy’s Cafe at Amboy. I intended to call the highway patrol to pick up the hitchhiker from there. As we pulled in, I looked around and there was a highway officer with the man we passed coming in right behind us. Thank heavens during breakfast our first small disagreement faded and I felt a bit more relaxed. Also Dick never grumbled at me again.

Amboy and Roy’s Cafe beckons.

Amboy was a small town established around 1883 as one of a series of railroad stations constructed across the Mojave by the predecessor Atlantic & Pacific Railroad to the Santa Fe Railway. As one might expect there was a population explosion after Route 66 opened in 1926. Roy’s Cafe and Motel opened in 1938 and was a real oasis, as there was next to nothing out along that stretch of the highway. In 1977-79 while exploring the large Amboy Crater and other scenic locations in the area our photography group also stopped to eat there on several occasions.

By 1983, the Interstate 40 bypass all but destroyed the little town. We sat in the nearly empty café talking about our different desert experiences while polishing off the last drop of coffee.

Looking through the cafe window, in the distance is the large Amboy crater.

Climbing back into our “motel on wheels” we pulled away from Roy’s leaving “Mars” behind and headed east following the highway towards Needles, another “cool” place in June. We stopped numerous times to either photograph a scenic location or a passing train still following the old 66 or as it’s called today, National Trails Highway.

Arriving at the Colorado River, a view of the Needles peaks came into view.

I’m not sure if it was obvious to anyone, but I was in “photographer’s heaven” traveling with the most fascinating man I’d ever met, but most of all, totally impressed that he knew so much desert history and all the best places to photograph trains.

Years later when cataloging Dick’s negative collection I discovered that he had been photographing the Mojave going back to the 1950’s, as well as, collecting stories about Amboy and the last famous owner of the cafe, Buster Burris. I met Buster as well in the ’70’s, but being a novice desert explorer, I did not know the significance or history of Amboy, the cafe and owner, or the nostalgia surrounding old Route 66.

Back to our journey. Driving through Needles and crossing the Colorado River we pulled off to a road next to Santa Fe’s tracks where Dick had spotted a man working and asked him if any trains were coming. He said he thought one was due in about 20 minute. We crossed back over to the Moab exit and drove to the bank of the Colorado where the Santa Fe Railroad Bridge crossed. This was another memorable location, because again my brain was in danger of being cooked. If you’ve ever had the occasion to be parked along the Colorado River in the summer, you’ll understand. By now I was traveling in shorts and sleeveless T-shirt and large hat.

I grabbed my photo gear out of the back of the van hoping to find the perfect location on the edge of the river bank, set up my camera on a tripod and aimed it towards the railroad bridge. With the sun beating down, I hovered over my camera to shield it from the hot sun and waited—nothing came. Finally, I took my hat off, covered the camera with it and walked back to the van for a water jug and proceeded to pour the cool water over my head. I don’t know what Dick thought, but I noticed he seemed to tolerate extremes in temperatures whether it was a blizzard in Donner Pass or standing on the banks of the Colorado in summer. I sat down inside the open sliding van door to wait. Minutes ticked away and began to turn into an hours, during which time I had retrieved my camera from the baking sun. We waited and waited. Dick was not one to give up on an approaching train just because it was not on time and would wait until it showed, even if it took all day. Luckily it was only four hours. [I say that with a slight grimace.]

The Santa Fe freight train finally arrives.

At last we saw the yellow nose of a Santa Fe locomotive approaching the far side of the river and bridge. The setting was spectacular, baking sun and all; we both took many more photographs than we probably needed. After it passed, we continued our trip eastward through Arizona and back around to Northern California.

We were married at the Silver Queen Saloon in Virginia City, Nevada, November 4, 1984.

Dick and I married in November 1984 and continued to travel all over the United States on photography assignments and on for ourselves until 1999, when it became apparent that his memory was slipping. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2000. We still had so many more places to see and stories yet to tell.

Mojave Desert, our home away from home.

On March 25, 2012, we made one more trip to “Mars” together and with close friends and family, I scattered Dick’s ashes in the Mojave Desert just as he requested years before:

Don’t bury me in any Forest Lawn,

or Eternal Acres.

Toss my ashes out into the desert around Ash Hill.

Let the wind behind the Santa Fe’s eastbound hotshots

pull me off toward Amboy and Cadiz.

Let me take one hundred years to know this desert.

–Richard Steinheimer, 1982

For more info on Shirley Burman Steinheimer: www.americanrailroadwomen.com, or e-mail: railwomen@earthlink.net

For more on Richard Steinheimer: www.railphoto-art.org/steinheimer.html

Richard Steinheimer and Shirley Burman with a Southern Pacific work crew, February 1985.