As I have become accustomed to life in the Mojave desert near Joshua Tree, California, my art practice has shifted again. I can become quite enchanted by the rain now, when visiting other climates and especially at home where it is so rare. When I lived on the east coast or in Texas, a rainy day was met as an inconvenience. I would suit up with waterproof armor and speed myself to keep as dry as possible. Now since living in such an arid climate, I have a strong somatic response to rain falling from the clouds. I have been making a series of rain drawings started in a visit to Chicago last summer. I stayed outside in the rain with paper and brush and created a series of drawings that I think of as storm conversations.
After returning to the desert, I carried that same elation at connecting with nature and found that the desert has very remarkable winds. Since making the Chicago storm conversations, I have begun trying to teach the Creosote bushes near my studio door how to draw when the wind encourages their branches to move.
Because Sun Spot is at a place called “Sky Village Swap Meet” I wanted present a “swap” instead of a monetary exchange. I believe it’s my role as an artist to present ideas and one of the ideas I think we all need more contact with is: alternative exchange. Here, at Sun Spot, a marketplace for artists, I am presenting an idea of exchange that skips the US dollar altogether.
One utensil in exchange for another. There is only one rule: “Don’t leave if you can’t take, don’t take if you can’t leave.” The manifesto in the shop also has as a log. Anyone can bring a lip balm, a chopstick, a pen, or a pencil to exchange at Sun Spot for an available utensil in the holder.
This idea came to me after I came across a pencil left in the soft sandy desert by my house by some chance incident on the same week as I was trying to imagine a stationery concept shop to move toward my enthusiasm for writing instruments.
So far, the project is in it’s forming stage, but still available at Sun Spot to see and experience as an idea to cook in your head as you leave. As the manifesto says at the end, “If you can’t figure this project out, that’s okay, maybe it will grow on you now that you have read this far. “
Saturday, February 3rd was the inaugural yahtzidency at Sun Spot at Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley. We played with handmade ceramic cups and dice and a scoresheet designed by hand. I am taking applications for new yahtzidents! If you are interested in becoming playing with me, please see the open call here.
I am so excited to share a new adventure in economic research and community. I am delighted to share in the role in taking over Sun Spot, a cooperative local artist shop at the Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley open on Saturdays from 9a-1pm. Elena Yu created and founded the project in 2022 and I participated as a member artist.
This year, I am looking forward to building upon previous experience with artist-and-alternative economies as well as learning about desert weekend marketplace exchanges. The site is a hub for bargain hunters and desert conversationalists alike.
I am working alongside the amazing fellow desert artist, Jillian Sandell, as Sun Spot’s co-stewards for this season. We are doing our best to learn alongside Elena’s vision and the current artist members experiences as we manifest a marketplace for artists that stands proudly outside of grind culture and wealthy patronage which often persists in popular imaginations of artist offerings.
Sun Spot offers a hub for shopping for artist’s local and experimental works as well as workshops and performative engagements during the shop’s Saturday hours. Please stay tuned to the project’s instagram account for the latest in workshop offerings.
In January I was invited to be join the 2023 Cohort of Artists with the Desert Research Library. A project sprung from the High Desert Test Sites. This library is unique among special library projects I have experienced. The entire collection is curated through artist’s selections. In being invited as an artist, I was invited to curate a selection of reading materials for a library in the desert. Being a super fan of all libraries- so quiet! so full of ideas! so teeming with future potential! so careful in preserving history! I was so excited to contribute my own ideas and archive of thinking and material to the library.
Of course, I went down my own rabbit hole tangent which involved spending A LOT of time researching video games, gaming history and philosophy and interweaving research on desert landscapes as gaming landscape. By mid-March, I had surfaced a short list of games that I believed were worth including in a library whose focus is the desert. I was also prepared with my understandings of video games as a kind of cultural property which we can “read” like a long form novel as justification for inclusion in a library of artist’s researching.
Four of my paintings are up and available at Compound Yucca Valley Gallery through June 4th. Each is a watercolor on paper mounted on MDF which I custom cut with a jigsaw to match edges. The forms oscillate between landscape and object, challenging the flatness of an image surface with their substantial mounting as sculptural portal. The group show was co-curated by Caroline Partamian and Lara Wilson.
Imaginary Landscapes
Joshua Almendinger, Mary Jeys Amy Kim Keeler Tynan Kerr, Allegra Pacheco, and Emily Silver.
Compound Yucca Valley is at 55372 Twentynine Palms Highway, Yucca Valley, CA
I am participating in a new shop in the Sky Village Swap Meet open every Saturday from 9am to 1pm. I am offering small items like mugs, postcards and cyanotype kits. Everything in the shop is under $50 and is run as a collective and with support from Arts Connection and the Arts Council of San Bernardino.
Sun Spot is at the Sky Village Swap Meet, 7028 Theater Road, Yucca Valley CA
I am joining the HWY 62 Open Studio Art Tour this year. In it’s 21st year here in this region spanning 8 desert communities, the tour is these weekends: October 8-9, 15-16, and 22-23, 2022.
My studio will be open on: October 8-9 and October 22-23 from 10am-5pm.
I will be visiting other studios on the second weekend. Please reach out if you will be around or if you want to visit studios with me!
I’d like to share with you some of the highlights of my first year in the wildly freeing and welcoming place I have been treating as a self-made artist residency and new home.
Hello from “other desert cities”
The high desert which includes Joshua Tree, Pioneertown, Landers, Yucca Valley, 29 Palms and Wonder Valley is an area indicated on a highway sign on I-10 as “other Desert Cities”. I first came here with friends in 2019. After the pandemic insisted road trip escapes only, Hashem and I visited here and agreed it was special and inviting. Over the summer of 2021, we took the plunge to make this “other” rural desert our home.
This painting, Days 227-229 is on view at the Mind’s Eye exhibition at Joshua Tree Art Gallery in downtown Joshua Tree, CA. Artist’s Reception (6-8pm) and Gallery Talk (7pm) on Saturday, September 10.
