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…
Editor’s note: In the 1980s one of the most influential art dealers in the West decided that Palm Canyon Drive was destined to be an arts district and she was the person to make it happen. To that end, Elaine…
Eric Merrell shows widely in the West, but soon you’ll have a rare opportunity to see 35 works of the desert master right here in the Coachella Valley. Merrell completed the series of paintings–showing the “wonder and strength” of the…
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…
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…
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…
New York artist Allan McCollum was having a run of bad luck. He’d been stiffed by a dealer, lost his studio and racked up his credit cards. Fed up with the commerce of art, he put everything in storage and…
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…
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…
