Ed. Note: Don Juan Matus was a Yaqui sorcerer who helped launch the New Age movement. He may have been an invention of author Carlos Castaneda, but even so he helped teenagers everywhere believe they could turn into blackbirds and…
C.E. “Smitty” Smith and the Glory Days of the Palm Springs Desert Museum
Ed. note: Like many museums in the pandemic era, the Palm Springs Art Museum (formerly Desert Museum) has been struggling of late. When things are wobbly, it often helps to return to bedrock. What did we first love? What was…
Outpost of Abstraction: Richard Guy Walton on the Comstock
If Cathedral City was an unlikely place to nurture groundbreaking artists like Agnes Pelton, Virginia City, Nevada, is even more unlikely. Twenty-six miles south of Reno, the frontier boomtown rests on a mountainside at 6,200 feet. It’s riddled with abandoned…
Headstone for a Hero: The Quest to Mark Susie Keef Smith’s Grave
Postcards from Mecca is a hero’s journey. Pioneer photographer Susie Keef Smith triumphed over heat, disability and roadless wilderness to document the 1920s desert east of the Salton Sea. But every heroic tale requires a villain. For Susie, it was…
Out of the Blue! George Frederick Gleich’s 1924 “Sketches from Life and Nature”
Never underestimate the benefits of publishing on the California Desert Art website! A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of having my article, “Smoke Tree George: The Fabled Life and Times of George Frederick Gleich,” posted, and, over…
Michael Moore, Carl Chew, Cholla Chairs, Triassic Quilts and More
Inspired by the recent California Desert Art article on Lynda Keeler’s maps, Michael Moore sent some of his own “imaginary topographics”. For decades, the widely exhibited artist has been exploring and mapping the northern Great Basin Desert. He grew up…