Drivers passing through Indian Wells normally encounter a monotonous stretch of lawns, sidewalks and opulence. Now, though, travelers are sighting a colorful, quirky object on the horizon. It’s the old Carl Bray gallery sign, recently replanted by the City. The…
Forgotten desert artists lost a champion when Fran Elliott, of Sedona, Arizona, died on April 22, 2014. Fran and her husband Ed unearthed the stories of dozens of neglected Arizona women artists. Their collection sparked the 2012 exhibit Arizona’s Pioneering…
Branding experts make big bucks dreaming up campaigns to sell communities, yet one of the simplest ways to build an identity is to promote a beloved artist. It worked for Santa Fe, in the case of Georgia O’Keeffe, and it’s…
Smoketree artist Carl Bray died in Banning on July 23, 2011, at age 94, after a brief illness. Carl had been working on new paintings up until two months ago. He took an annual vacation to Missouri with family members…
November 21, 2010–Anyone driving down Highway 111 last week saw that the long-dreaded demolition of the Carl Bray Gallery has begun. A crew first tore off the roof that the artist had painstakingly reinforced with steel beams salvaged from the…
August 23rd, 2010–On August 19th the Indian Wells City Council decided unanimously to trash the Carl Bray home and gallery, despite months of public pleas to save it and despite the findings of an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) that the…
August 3, 2010–The Carl Bray home and gallery in Indian Wells has been stuck in limbo, with the city determined to tear it down and preservationists determined to hang on to it. There were two big developments at an Indian…
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.)
The Indian Wells Historic Preservation Foundation is selling note cards featuring Carl Bray paintings of classic desert scenes. The price is $10 for a box of 5 cards.
