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…
Shirley Burman and Richard Steinheimer: A Desert Date on “Mars”
Ed. Note: California Desert Art is honored to present one of the great untold romances of the desert. Staged in a crater near Amboy, Shirley Burman Steinheimer’s story tells of her first desert date with Richard Steinheimer. Her late husband…
Robert Arnett: The Original Wonder Valley Homesteader
If you take the Hwy 62 Art Tour this weekend (Oct. 27-28, 2012), you’ll notice the ephemeral feeling in the air. So many LA artists have moved here in recent years. The studios feel like they might close up at…
Val Samuelson: The Bulldozing Modernist of Cat City
I arrived at an estate sale in the Cathedral City Cove not long ago to find what looked like a line of leaf-cutter ants carrying away oversized objects. People balanced huge picture frames on their shoulders, floated them along like…
James Toenjes: Painting the Cahuilla Landscape
I first knew Jim Toenjes as an archaeologist who works closely with the eminent Cahuilla scholar Lowell Bean. One day I happened to glance in Jim’s car trunk and realized with a start he is an archaeologist who also has…
Ron Backer: Bringing Americana to a Stronghold of Modernism
Join me in saying Thanks to the state of South Dakota for sending Ronald Backer our way. It’s as if the Great Plains groomed this artist just for us–salting him with treks to Spirit Mound and seasoning him with the…