March 12, 2019–Millicent Harvey and I stood on the bank of Araby Wash and surveyed a gutted expanse. Some carcasses of smoke trees were snagged under the Highway 111 bridge, but the dense grove–a favorite of painters and photographers for…
March 7, 2019–When I last wrote about Desert X it was to warn you that the art carnival might be coming for your mountain. Little did I know they were coming for mine–the inviolate north face of Mt. San Jacinto.…
February 1, 2019–In the next few weeks, desert art will have a moment. We’ll be gracing the pages of major magazines and newspapers around the world: Vogue, Architectural Digest, W Magazine. If the 2017 coverage is any gauge, the 2019…
In the last couple of years I’ve feasted endlessly on 2,000 historic photos of the unexplored desert east of the Salton Sea. Taken by 1930s Mecca postmaster Susie Keef Smith and her cousin Lula Mae Graves, the collection offers an…
December 10, 2018–Jeff Lapides was laying out pages for historian John Robinson’s final book when he noticed some very old photos by a man with a fancy name: Rudolph d’Heureuse. “I thought who the heck was this French guy and…
When a cowboy starts collecting Western art, you’d expect to see a lot of horses and saddles. That’s not true for Utah rancher George Wanlass. As he amassed art for the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, he was drawn…
