When he was a 9th grader living in a desert outpost, John Emerson needed help with his science project–the use of thermocouples to generate electricity. Most people in 1960s Cathedral City wouldn’t know a thermocouple from a thesaurus. But Emerson…
In Mari Coates’ new novel, real life characters Billie Prigge Seaman, Christina Lillian and the Hillery family are reanimated, as is the beloved little hamlet of Cathedral City itself. I’ve been living with Agnes’ story for more than a decade…
Editor’s note: No one captures the action-adventure ethos of the early desert artists better than Marjorie Reed, best known for her paintings of the Butterfield Overland Stage. You can learn more about Reed from Gary Fillmore, author of All Aboard:…
Art and Theosophy at Lomaland You don’t have to labor through Helena Blavatsky’s tomes to get a taste for Theosophy, an esoteric belief system that inspired Agnes Pelton and so many others. The teachings are notoriously opaque to modern minds,…
Editor’s Note: For those wishing to go deeper into Peltonia we’re pleased to present this essay by Jan Rindfleisch. A former director of the Euphrat Museum of Art, Rindfleisch was involved in the earliest days of Pelton’s rediscovery. Here she…
During a fifth grade field trip in 1966, Sharon Ellis’ class shuffled into the San Diego Museum of Art and listened dutifully as a docent told the children why they should admire a painting featuring a young girl as the…
September 7, 2019—On a June day in 1947, Agnes Pelton sat at her table in Cathedral City and drew a map of a place she knew as well as she knew her own backyard. There was the ancient stone wall…
In 2019, the Phoenix Art Museum published Agnes Pelton, Desert Transcendentalist, a 220-page hardcover book about the illustrious paintings of Agnes Pelton (1881–1961). This impressive volume, which will accompany the traveling exhibition, contains magnificent full-page reproductions of her art and…
June 22, 2019–In the days when the Palm Springs Art Museum included desert in their name, they featured an exhibit spotlighting three dune systems: the Salton Sea, the Coachella Valley and the Algodones Dunes. One of the artists starring in…
May 24, 2019–When I walked into the La Quinta Museum one day recently the place was abuzz over an unlikely topic. Staff members too young to remember Woodstock were chatting excitedly about the Hog Farm–a 1960s commune founded by peace…
