Carl Bray Revisionism, Jane Culp’s Bighorn Skull Studies, Fair Ladies, Agnes’ Encourager and More

When the City of Indian Wells bulldozed Carl Bray’s home and gallery in 2010, an epic David versus Goliath story ended. The City had tried to evict Bray for decades because his hand-built home on Hwy 111 clashed with their slick image. Carl long held off his wealthy foe with Okie humor and sheer determination. He died in a nursing home in Banning just months after his home was finally destroyed.

But now it appears that the ballad of Carl Bray (1917-2011) is not actually over. A new group called the Indian Wells Preservation Foundation is in talks with the City to build a museum/library at the site of the former Bray home, and their revised narrative makes the City the hero of Carl’s ballad.

A post on the foundation’s website says the City found Carl’s house to be dilapidated and a safety hazard–yet a CEQA report actually found the home to be structurally sound and historically significant. In the revised tale, the City made sure to save essential artifacts, and then honored the past by building an inspiring monument at the former home site. In truth, Carl’s friends saved the artifacts and hounded the city relentlessly until they mitigated the destruction with a roadside marker. (To clarify a murky twist, the new IWPF is unaffiliated with the original group that fought side-by-side with Carl. That group, founded by Adele Ruxton and Mary Roche, was called the Indian Wells Historic Preservation Foundation. The IWPF snagged the name and nonprofit ID number but it is an entirely different group.)

The recent revival of interest in Carl includes a class about the artist at Claremont Graduate University along with an exhibition of his work on campus early this year, as well as a planned show at the HoltXPalm Gallery in Ontario in August, 2024, featuring a family member, Tim Key. As more people hear Carl’s ballad, which version will it be? I’m confident that truth will triumph over revision. Like the artist himself, ballads are nimble and enduring.

Farewell to Gary Fillmore, Historian of Swinnerton Country

In the short stack of books that sit permanently by my desk is Gary Fillmore’s Shadows on the Mesa, a plunge into the early Arizona artists. Gary had the true feeling for the Southwest desert—you can call it topophilia, a love of place—and for the painters back when there was no Instagram, and no payoff for such expertise. Gary died in May, 2024, of melanoma. He had battled several other serious illnesses in recent years and always sprung back—in one case sporting curly hair after chemo.

There are many overlaps between the Arizona artists and the painters of the Coachella Valley. Gary and I shared an obsession to map their travels back and forth across the Colorado River. He wrote books on Jimmy Swinnerton, who lived in Palm Desert, and Marjorie Reed who once resided in Cathedral City. In recent years he had closed his Blue Coyote Gallery in Scottsdale and resumed working in his mechanical engineering business. Still, he kept a foothold in desert art and when someone called me about a Swinnerton painting—it was Gary, I sent them to. He leaves behind many stories that would not have been told without him. For more on Gary’s quest, see his Looking for Jimmy blog. https://lookingforjimmy.com/author/coyotero/page/3/

Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery recently featured a show of desert artists as a tribute to Gary. See the all-star line-up here:

http://www.bodegabayheritagegallery.com/Artists_Now_at_the_Gallery.html

Evan Lindquist, Keeper of Christina Lillian’s Story

Christina Lillian, a shining figure in the Agnes Pelton saga, would still be a mystery to us if it were not for the artist Evan Lindquist. He died in January, 2023, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I had written about the enigmatic, beautiful neighbor of Agnes who lived in the Cathedral City Cove, but knew little about her even after years of inquiry. Then one day Evan Lindquist wrote to say: “Christina Lillian was my great-aunt.”

Evan generously shared every detail he remembered about Emma Christina (her full name). The first Artist Laureate of the State of Arkansas, Evan Lindquist was a skilled engraver in the style of the old masters. His own shining art and teaching career was inspired by his Aunt Emma. See Aunt Emma through his eyes here:

https://www.californiadesertart.com/the-lost-colony-of-sven-ska-christina-lillian-and-the-cathedral-city-artists/

See more of Evan’s beautiful engravings here: https://m2lr.com/artists/47-evan-lindquist/

Eating Stone, Jane Culp

Jane Culp’s recent show at the Santa Ysabel Art Gallery was inspired by a bighorn ram’s skull found in a mountain lion den in Coyote Canyon, near the artist’s studio. Her skull studies capture “a life of clash and butt,” as she puts it. The title of the show is a nod to the late desert writer Ellen Meloy and her book of the same name that follows a band of bighorn sheep.

The show closes in July, 2024, but the paintings will remain in house at the Santa Ysabel Art Gallery. Drop by and partake of the tactile and alive world Culp surveys daily from her home and studio. She describes a typical day of painting: “Rope the easel to my knees and low to the ground with stones because of the wind, big sun hat much white zinc paste sunblock, and in rugged solitary country, put my back to the van for safety. Oh! And Biting Ants!…tuck pant legs into the boot socks. Don’t finish—LEAVE if clouds get beautifully threatening.”

www.janeculpart.com

https://santaysabelartgallery.com

Dust Bowl Poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s Link to Agnes Pelton

The mythos of Agnes Pelton suggests she was born with mystical insight and divine confidence, but like the rest of us she had to be unsure at times. In slow summer months, in the off-the-map town of Cathedral City, she relied on a longtime neighbor, Cornelia Sussman, to fortify her resolve. Sussman (along with her husband, Irving) had a knack for discerning talent before critics caught on, and then fanning it into flame.

When Jan Rindfleisch wrote about the Sussmans for this website, she called them “encouragers”. https://www.californiadesertart.com/staying-visible-how-a-small-town-couple-boosted-agnes-peltons-star/

A new book by Betty Blanks, Pick Up Your Name and Write, shows “the encourager” Cornelia Jessey (pen name for Cornelia Sussman) working magic yet again, on another great and marginalized California artist. Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, a sharecropper’s daughter from Oklahoma, migrated to California during the Dust Bowl and became known as The Okie Poet Laureate. Like Pelton, she was a single woman who could easily be marginalized due to ill health. Like Pelton, she was called a recluse but in truth had many devoted friends. Just as Cornelia Sussman had cheered Pelton in Cathedral City, she later encouraged this poet who wrote California classics in a government subsidized apartment in Tulare. “The poet must be held to the magnetic line of her voices—like Joan of Arc—letting no other pull deflect,” Cornelia once told Wilma.

Fans of California literature and history will be fascinated by the new book by Betty Blanks, a longtime friend of the late poet.

https://wilmaelizabethmcdaniel.com/

Russell Lee’s Fair Ladies

California desert visuals these days are more about scenery and less about the people who live here. The desert-as-blank-canvas cliché (thank you, Neville Wakefield) appeals to marketers and influencers but in truth these spaces have always been peopled and over time the people who live here longest become part of the landscape.

The clear bond between people and their places abounds in the deeply intimate work of Russell Lee, a lesser-known documentary photographer who portrayed humans in their home habitats all over the United States. A current show at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, Power and Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey focuses on his work in coal mining communities. Lee also did extensive work in agricultural communities. In 1942, he visited El Centro, a deep desert town south of the Salton Sea. His photos of locals attending the Imperial County Valley Fair are chock-full of humanity. According to his biographer, Mary Jane Appel, he especially liked observing people at fairs as they observed magic shows, daredevils and rodeos—he liked watching people watching. Though it takes some searching, it is worth hunting online for the companion pieces to Fair Ladies (a second photo is called Fair Laddies) in the El Centro series.

https://museum.archives.gov/power-and-light-russell-lee-coal-survey

Sharon Bronzan Throws Us a Life Preserver

At the start of the pandemic I took comfort from the paintings and the outlook of Sharon Bronzan, a part-time desert artist who specializes in peril and its antidotes in myth, folklore, spiky succulents and taloned beasts. I’ve been delayed in posting news due to the latest world peril—intense, prolonged heat that is making the desert I love uninhabitable. It’s an obvious time to turn again to Bronzan. A show of her new work, Lost in Reality, debuted at Augen Gallery in Portland in May, 2024. I recommend that you turn to her paintings when reality isn’t working for you and you a need magical save.

https://www.augengallery.com/exhibitions/sharon-bronzan-lost-in-reality/