Lora Woodhead Steere was only a baby in 1890 when she first rode a wagon into Strawberry Valley in the San Jacinto mountains. In 1946 she met Max Krone, who was founding a new school in Idyllwild, and Steere went…
Agnes Pelton: Mystic Genius of Cat City
When returning from a haircut appointment recently, I swung by the former Cathedral City home of the visionary painter Agnes Pelton. She moved out of the house in 1960 and died a year later; today hardly anyone remembers she once…
Katherine McKay: California Roaming
Ed. Update–We are sorry to report that Katherine McKay died of cancer, in Richmond, Calif., on October 12, 2011. Editor’s Note—We’ve been telling you about the early desert painters; with this essay by Katherine McKay we shift into the…
Save the Carl Bray Gallery; Submit a Comment by July 19th
The most significant brick-and-mortar monument to the Smoketree School of desert painters is the Carl Bray home and gallery in Indian Wells, Calif. As well as being the last remaining scrap of the original village of Indian Wells, Bray’s gallery…
Carl Bray: Grandpa Moses of the Desertlands
I’m sitting at Gramma’s restaurant in Banning, California, with the 92-year-old artist Carl Bray across the table from me. The legendary “smoketree painter” of Indian Wells, Carl is one of the last of the early desert artists. With his huge railroadman’s hands, he pushes aside the plates and unfolds a map of New Mexico to show me where he first steered “Brownie”–the esteemed Western painter R. Brownell McGrew–into Navajo country. (Brownie lived in Cathedral City in the 1950s and then in La Quinta—read more about him here soon.)
Honoring Sally Ward and Louise Tennyson
UPDATE: Louise Tennyson Goble died on July 15, 2010, in Palm Springs. She is survived by her husband, Floyd Goble of Palm Springs, and son Gary Pierce of New York City, along with other relatives. This June CDA recognizes two…