For R. Brownell McGrew’s first ever one-man show in 1967, Ginger Renner packed nearly 1000 guests into her Desert Southwest Art Gallery in Palm Desert. The crowd spilled onto the then-deserted Highway 111, high on art and the owner’s infamous…
Glenda Nordmeyer: Stone Diaries
Since founding this website I can now attest: The world is not really going to Twitter. People are still going deeper and deeper into the land, abandoning their glowing screens to seek beauty. The ranks of contemporary desert painters are…
Smoketree Trio: New Books on Desert Artists
Scholarship on The Smoketree School made big strides in the spring of 2011 with the release of three new books covering unexplored corners of desert art. California Art Club California Light: A Century of Landscapes is the long-anticipated history of…
Norton Allen: Tracking the Elusive Mapmaker
My fascination with Norton Allen goes back to a hot day 15 years ago when I brought home a cardboard box of old Desert Magazines. The magazine, published from 1937 to 1985, offered an alternative to the Palm Springs of…
Border Foxes, John Hilton, Eric Merrell, Effie! and More
When a fox named Fresno encounters three border-crossing foxes from Mexico, they all wind up partying at a palm oasis–in a series of enchanting illustrations by British-born artist Anthony W. Parr. “A fox knows no borders, just how to have…
Marjorie’s View: Bringing Borrego Painters Home
When Barbara Nickerson put an ad in the Borrego Sun looking for early Borrego desert paintings, she wound up filling in missing pieces of California art history. The Executive Director of the Borrego Art Institute, Nickerson appealed to local collectors…