Quarantining for two years, exercising extra caution daily, including driving 1800 miles thrice to avoid people, it seemed a risk to jump in late to the Palm Springs Modernism exhibit at their convention center. As usual, I call my friend there to get any feeling she had about it. “Any experience? Any thoughts? Advice?” Once Pam Price, our Andy Rooney doppelgänger, salty old-world story-teller, said “Oh yes, do it!” Yikes, yes, I’m going in! Ahh that lingering covid angst flushed by the surge of familiar adrenaline.
Lo and behold, locals and winter birds stopped, smiled, reached and collected my art. Naturally high to bond, pack their purchase and cyber bank the art-currency in the flurry of action.
Hashtag and keyword, formerly know as adjective: mid-century, works. Those folks are the loving audience for the analog media art I have poured my heart, hands and eyes into this past decade.
Lucky for me, finally finding (more of) my peeps, natural lovers of the subject matter, bright colors and method of my work. And I have a home of my own up Highway 62 where the Highway 62 Art Tours are again soon and Joshua Tree National Park is my local, quiet, big nature, earth-girl walk, meditation, hide-out. It’s like instead of going to yoga in SaMo to breath deep, I will just do that all the time.
Connected by the newfound art market, and faced with the inevitable finish of prolonged diminishing hope. Unmasked smiles of happy art collectors in Palm Springs is wooing.
It was as if I had a view from a plane window, I know so well, looking at this geo-love triangle, Santa Monica, Joshua Tree and Palm Springs. Holding onto my fabulous former airplane mechanics’ hangar, for the rebound which only sank from pandemic to riots, to micro and macro identity crises, to mismanagement and other issues, was out-numbered. Although, the lifestyle enjoyed and built over 30 years doesn’t subside impulsively.
Forever, Santa Monica, I remain grateful to the spirit of the city, international people and the opportunity to grow into my own. Working into my creativity, independence, beyond the patriarch, self-actualization is a great life. To work as an artist is a dream realized. The sun, marine layer, fresh air, good food and culture of excellence are all an education and reward. The albeit controversial rent-control allowed me to live in a coveted location and survive in the changed from sleepy beachside community to a high class, high tech world of competitive ultra-consumerism. Thanks life-long friends of megalopolis LA and 90400s, you are all a part of me.
The next chapter is an odd, yet ideal combo of desert, low to high des home. Commute is mountains and expanse. Focused like lightening, Palm Springs to Joshua Tree is magnetizing, warm and bright. The consistent clarity of sunshine and night sky, ancient mapping of outer space and simple ground with asymmetrical beloved trees, are reflected in the culture of hipsters and desert rats. Small. Quiet. Close enough.
End of September 2022, I will be moving eastward to a new creative space 3D and otherwise. The quiet, big sky, dark nights of Joshua Tree with wild critters, as the neighbors will surely change me, as did the end of the trans-continental Rosa Parks Freeway, for the better long while.
Call it my second Saturn return. The move to the high desert is a correlation of age and address. Good time to retreat but not stop. A calm pride and humility anchors me now to expand on this universal and ancient sky-oriented culture and the art it provokes.
About the same time I arrived at the Santa Monica Airport Art Studio, I bought a house in the now known, Joshua Tree Village. It was out-back and broken with tumble weeds and biker gangs. After twenty years in the urban jungle, I fell in love with the dust. One-by-one I picked up the trash, cigarette butts, broken glass, fed the birds and unwittingly started a home improvement second career. As my artwork progressed, the tacky little run-down home and town progressed and in 2014 became The Joshua Tree Type Inn.
Five years later, I did it again. Alas, I moved into a humble home of my own with a yard. In combo with tending The Type Inn, I will be creating in my home studio and expanding into Palm Springs, down the Little San Bernardino Mountains. Did you know The Palm Springs ARt Museum stores sell TypO notecards and pillows in their shops and The Rancho Mirage Library has my work in their permanent collection? “WORD.” is in their front conference room.
At home, I keep myself surrounded with friends’ art. It gives me comfort and joy to have their personal creations in my cocoon. Not all my art collection is from known friends but pieces I love, so they seem like friends. May you do that too!
