Ann Japenga
Ann Japenga is a Palm Springs-based writer specializing in stories about the art, history and landscape of the California desert. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times she roamed the West and discovered a love of stories tied to the land. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Utne, Sierra, Palm Springs Life and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, as well as anthologies such as True Tales of the Mojave. She is the founder of the online magazine www.CaliforniaDesertArt.com.
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If ever there is a Palm Springs LGBTQ Hall of Fame, Rose Dougan will surely require her own wing. Named Flying Rose, she lived an adventurous life learning to fly with Wilbur Wright, taking "the longest all-woman drive," and eventually working to help preserve the art of Native American basketry for generations to come.
From stopping union uprisings for Henry Ford to a desert landscape painter, Harry Bennett wasn’t just a militaristic figure in corporate America but also, strangely, a skilled artist.
As America’s first TV artist debuting in 1946, Jon Gnagy was a predecessor to the now-trendy Bob Ross. Hundreds of artists and artists credit him as their inspiration, from New York contemporary artist Allan McCollum to Andy Warhol.
Agnes Pelton’s Cat City home is no majestic artist enclave, but unable to drive, she still found her mystic inspirations in her small hometown. Walk in her shoes.
Sharon Ellis' luminous landscapes draw on nearly the whole history of landscape painting. Think American Luminists, Charles Burchfield and his "animated landscapes" and even Light and Space artists James Turrell and Robert Irwin.
"Desert Magazine" published from 1937 to 1985, offered readers an appealing world of mirages, ghost towns and lost treasure. Its maps sizzled with life and adventure. They were created lovingly — and it turns out painstakingly — by an elusive mapmaker.
She was a beautiful blonde artist — a friend to Greta Garbo, D.H. Lawrence and Agnes Pelton — and she ruled over a Valhalla of early artists, Sven-Ska, somewhere out in the California desert.
A masterwork of organic architecture by a virtually forgotten 1920s Palm Springs architect, R. Lee Miller, the Araby Rock houses could be mistaken for the Shire from "Lord of the Rings," and over the years, it has attracted its own vivid residents.
Over decades, Hazel Iona Stiles created an uplifting — almost invisible — piece of land art that could only be appreciated from the elevation of an airplane, or even higher.
In the 1920s, armed with a .38 revolver and a large format camera, Susie Smith and her cousin Lula Mae Graves set out to photograph the last of the prospectors, burro packers and stage stops in the remote desert to the east.