More Desert X and Other Ramblings

 We had visitors today. Mr. and Mrs. duck just waddled across the lawn. I sure hope they don't discover the pool! 

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Today is Sunday (3/14) and between allergies (the orange blossoms are pungent!) and the time change, I wasn't up for any more art viewing. But I do have these photos from last time.

The artist, Kim, lives in Joshua Tree and has for many years. She wanted to tell the story of homesteaders and brought this real homestead which was someone's home for many years as her art installation.

This would be called a tiny house now. The windows are just high enough that I could not see in. LeeAnne had to take the picture of the interior for me. She's taller. There was a radio playing. I do know if you go to the Desert X 2021 web site, you can see pictures of all of the exhibits.

Below is the Community Center to the right of the homestead house.

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Then it was on to The Passenger. The pathway in was lined with rocks. The sand was like beach sand where you sank down to the tops of your shoes. It was a tough slog!

View of the mountains.

With the mountains at your back, you can see the maze. It almost looks like burlap.

But in a close up, you can see that it's a woven basket weave. The guy wires appeared to be jute covered in see-through plastic.

Here's a look at the line of people waiting to go into the maze. We waited about 15 minutes and had at least 20 minutes if not longer to wait. We didn't wait. I didn't care to go into a maze, particularly since we would be forced to a pace by the people in front of and behind us. We learned today that they were requiring tickets and they had sold out for the day. I don't think there was a price, but it was the number of people that they would allow in.

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View of the mountains and clouds at entrance to Sunnylands where our next art installation reposed.

Sunnylands, the former Annenberg Estate, located in Rancho Mirage, California, is a 200-acre estate currently run by The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, a not-for-profit organization.--Wikipedia

One of my favorite parts of Sunnylands (near the patio of the cafe).

I'm still crazy about barrel cactus.

This exhibit consisted of planters which spelled out words of (good) qualities of women. One of the planters had the plants below, but they were very new and scraggly.

I was very excited that we could tour Sunnylands without an admission.

Resilent (above)

I don't remember what word the above letter was from, but I was really disappoionted that they didn't use more mature plants. The words were arranged in a circle in the center of the green across from the museum building.

You can see the sides of the word planters, looking at the museum.

And that was it for our Saturday art tour!

Today was a very lazy Sunday for me. After laundry I did a tad of sewing. 

I think we should all vote to eliminate daylight savings time! This changing of the clocks is driving me crazy. Be well and happy. Cheers!

Great Cloud Weather

It's great cloud weather with gusty winds and some rain for the past couple of days. It's hard to remember that one year ago, today was Mom's 90th birthday party. We had a great time then and we had a great time this year celebrating her birthday on March 7th. Of course, our lovely friends (also known as Everything for a Party! Group) started celebrating on my birthday a week earlier. I am partied out! And extremely grateful to know these wonderful people.

Speaking of clouds, here are some of my favorite pictures from today.

These flowers are from a couple of days ago, at the perimeter of a golf course. I like the clouds here too.

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We went early on Thursday to see the first Desert X installation in Palm Springs. Today was the actual opening of the 12 installations. Here's the first.

It was created by artist Nicholas Galanin, who is from Alaska and has Tlingit a,nd Unangax̂ ancestry. "Historically, Hollywood was a real estate advertisement for white, rural communities and this work engages that history in a lot of ways," Galanin said in a phone interview with The Desert Sun earlier this week.

On our way, we passed by the windmill farm ...

There was a lot of sand blowing in the wind!

Today, Friday (3/12) was the official opening of Desert X. We went to Palm Desert to see

It was quite an uphill hike for me on the rocky desert sand -- at least a quarter mile one way.

When you get closer, it looks like a bunch of rugs and blankets stacked up.

Here's a closer look.

And now you can see that the white stuff (it looked like a plastic batting) was sprayed with the sand-like material. There was a bit of glitter in the spray which sparkled in the sunlight.

I have to confess that I wimped out and stayed in the car for the next one. LeeAnne climbed for over 20 minutes one way, at times straight up and the installation wasn't finished. She described it as black poles almost like a jungle gym and they were affixing what looked like big marble blocks to it. Sorry, I'm too lazy to find out what it might be called.

Next was Wishing Well (LeeAnne's favorite so far).

The structure is a patchwork of plastic cooking oil containers which are used to haul water in Ghana, the artist's home country. Each patch is held by metal "stitches." He was making a statement about water insecurity there and here. Some locals in Coachella were not amused and refused space. Finally, it was sited in North Palm Springs in a public park. 

Below is the artist being interviewed.

Then we wandered around looking for the next Desert X installation. We found this:

It turns out, it was just grafitti -- we never found the real thing. 

The wind came up again.

We were, however, right near the Palm Springs Babies.

The red zig zag line has been added since I first saw the installation two years ago. It represents a fault line made by earthquakes.

The blue rods you see at the bottom of the picture above are "security" in case you climb up with wrought iron gates. I stuck my phone through the bars, almost dropping it into the pit.

The babies are still creepy in my opinion.

Another addition is our national poet laureate, Amanda Gorman.

Also nearby was NorthFace by Gucci, a Desert X sponsor.

I have been working bit by bit on Sweet Watermelon Dreams, a summer quilt using the wonderful fabric LeeAnne gave me for my birthday. I had to do a bunch of stitch ripping since when I finished it the first time, there were 4 red squares on one side. Ugh. It's better now!

And Hey Diddle Diddle has been finished and sold. That's Mom holding it up for its portrait.

That's it for now. Today is Saturday and LeeAnne and I "did" more Desert X today. So there are a lot more photos, but I'm too tired. We plan on seeing more tomorrow. So I probably will combine the two days into another blog post.

Stay tuned and be happy!