The natural beauty of the desert is art in itself. A recent weekend viewing these desert vistas, the exhibitions at Desert X, and the gorgeous luminescence of Phillip K. Smith’s work at the Palm Springs Art Museum – both exhibitions up through May 5th – was richly rewarding. Both exhibitions will be featured in a separate pictorial essay here in coming weeks.
But the biggest art standout of all was an exhibition that spoke to those desert vistas, the mountains behind them, the fecund forests, natural landscapes far and near. Monumentally Fragile at the Walter N. Marks Center for the Arts in Palm Desert offered the most resonant of all the exhibitions viewed on this trip to the desert, memorable images with a dream-like lingering in the eye and heart. The three-gallery space was curated by StartUp curatorial founder Ray Beldner, and featured three different artists, each with a single room to present large scale, but yes, delicate, individual exhibitions.
These intricate paper works were each entirely unique, but taken as a whole, vibrated with even greater meaning. Here is nature in all her wonder, in her own precarious state, given humankind’s rampant disregard for preserving her. Using fragile materials to create images of an environment that we should all strive to protect is an inspired idea; carefully, gently, and pointedly positing the importance of our stewardship. Having recently curated an exhibition in Los Angeles about climate change, Leaving Eden, I was excited to see work that spoke to the same precious fragility of nature.
The works in Monumentally Fragile are as magnificient as nature herself. Catherine Ruane, who lives in the desert’s Morongo Valley, has created a series of emotionally moving smaller circular works, arrayed in a pattern around a larger circular work. Here are yuccas and Joshua Trees, night sky and its constellations, each so perfectly rendered in the artist’s signature monochrome use of pencil and charcoal that their intricate beauty brings tears. On an opposite wall, Ruane adds walnut ink to her coloration, depicting leaves and flowers with an even more wistful cast, as if they were relics from a distant time. The centerpiece of the exhibition, however, is her vast General Sherman tree, a nearly life-size paper cut out of a tree with delicate drawn leaves and branches shaping a mesmerizing, even ethereal, creation. These pieces ache with life and light.
David Tomb of Marin, Calif., creates in full color, shaping wonderfully sweet and fairy-tale-like forests of voluptuous green, flowering plants, and animals to frolic and fly through this world. Reminding the viewer of a wondrous jungle, within this amazing world bright blue, yellow, and orange butterlies and golden-beaked birds are joined by shadow-casting, dimensional sparrows suspended in flight. Dimensional vivid green plants spring from the ground. Tomb’s lustrous work is like a stage set for the senses, poetic, wild, and adventurous.
Holly Wong of San Francisco fills the center of her gallery with brightly colored abstract shapes, reminiscent of both flowers and mosaics, of woven lace and cacti, undersea coral and tangled vines. On the walls, smaller pieces of mixed media also evoke sea life, with a rich and opalescent cast and tangled strands of netting and fiber. Hers is mutable moonscape of nature, mysterious and fascinating, a tapestry of colors and movement.
All three artists have created work that is beautiful and carefully wrought, special works that reveal sensuous, solemn, grand, and perfect nature in all her wonder and all her valuable, vibrant, easy to break, glory. While the exhibition has closed in person, the works can be viewed online, by clicking on each image. Take care of nature – and watch out for the blissful work of these three artists.
- Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis
