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…
Larry Hughes’ new book Rings of Fire tells the story of a little-known mining camp that doubled as an art camp during WWII. The calcite crystals mined there were used to make gunsights for ships and aircraft. At the center…
Just after midnight on January 1st, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a telegraph button in Washington D.C.; the signal shot across the country to launch the start of the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. In the harbor, the USS San…
On the final night of the Joshua Tree spacecraft convention in 1958, Hollywood stuntmen tumbled seven stories off the face of Giant Rock. Columba Krebs waited in the wings while organizer George Van Tassel’s daughters performed songs taught to them…
The evicted residents of the Kumeyaay village raced to assemble a goat corral and government-issued tents before the rains came. Trunks, boxes, stoves, manos and bedding were scattered around the camp. A frail Easterner sat nearby making sketches of the…
Editor’s note: This article by Steven Carlson suggests an entirely new school of desert art. While we’ve deemed the Coachella Valley painters the Smoketree School, Effie Anderson Smith (Steven’s great-great aunt) devoted much of her work to the misunderstood yucca.…
On a November day in 1961, Emma Lou Davis was returning home from an archaeology dig in her usual grunge attire: Shorts, heavy boots and work shirt. Her sweat-sculpted hair stuck out in all directions, her fingernails were grimy, face…
It seems the desert herself has elected an ambassador and sent her out into the world to represent us. Sharon Ellis–who works quietly in Yucca Valley–has a show, New Works on Paper, at the Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles through October…
Each day when she finished her shift at the Shadow Mountain Club in Palm Desert, Evelyn Chevoor swung by the base of the mountain where Fred Chisnall was painting beside the panel truck that doubled as his home. Chisnall was…
The Pleistocene shorelines that drew Sylvia Winslow are mostly off-limits now behind the gates of the million-plus acre Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. On a recent trip to research Sylvia’s life, I longed to duck behind those gates. Even…
