Ed. Note: In a coup for the Smoketree School, we’ve discovered that Grace Hall Hemingway, mother of Ernest, painted scenes around the Imperial Valley, Death Valley and the Coachella Valley. Here her grandson, John E. Sanford, looks at Grace’s late-in-life…
This article first appeared in Palm Springs Life, Winter/Spring 2013 Any Palm Springs visitor can board a bus and tour Liberace’s pad. With only a little more effort, you can see the view that inspired mystical visions from Agnes Pelton’s…
I’ve pondered smoke trees more than most people, but over lunch with Millicent Harvey–a recent transplant from Boston to Palm Springs—I quickly realized I was the novice listening to a teacher far more experienced on the subject. The smoke tree…
Ed. note: Jim Trolinger’s new book Painting in Death Valley is a must for desert artists and their fans. See ordering info at the end of the article. After 40 years of visiting and painting Death Valley I still enjoy…
Ed. Note: This article first appeared in the Fall, 2012, issue of The Sand Paper, the newsletter of the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association. If you meet a woman in Surprise Canyon who can name 40 different wildflowers, or a…
The painter Kathi Hilton Garvin, art dealer Dan Rohlfing and I had just finished dinner at the 29 Palms Inn. The sky was turning pink then blue, like a Technicolor Hilton painting, when Dan suggested that we try to find…
