Palm Springs Art Museum

     I came away from the Palm Springs Art Museum thinking that it has a little bit of everything.  They had paintings, photography, textiles, sculpture, furnishings, basketry, and ancient artifacts.

Here I am in front of the museum.  This sculpture was done by Zhan Wang and is appropriately enough called Artificial Rock.

Artist Yoshimoto Nara named his fiberglass pet Your Dog.  With a lot of black spray paint, I could turn this into My Dog!

I liked the wishing sphere.  You write your wish on a piece of paper and insert the paper into the slot.  I wonder what they do with all those wishes when the sphere fills up.

I love baskets.  They had two walls of baskets.

This is Ryuanji by Deborah Butterfield.  Ms. Butterfield created the horse from driftwood found near her home, then cast the statue in bronze.  She then treated the bronze so that it became the same color as the original drfitwood.

This pair of male and female figures is called Nayarit.  They are 2000-2500 years old.

Mid-Century Modern
So, do you think it's coming back any time soon?

Spider II by Louise Bourgeois
Loiuse Bourgeois liked to make spiders.  She says this example symbolizes maternity.  It has to be big and scary to protect and nurture its brood.  This piece is described as a "monstrous mamman."  I liked the spider, but I never once thought it represented anything maternal. 

What looks like a pile of Hefty® bags is actually a bronze sculpture that has been painted black.  I don't think this sort of thing impresses anymore.

Nor did I like this - Mother's Pride IV by Anthony Gormley.  It is made from lots of slices of white sandwich bread.  The figure in the center that looks like it is curled up in the fetal position  was formed by taking bites out of the bread.  How in the world do they keep the bread from getting moldy?

Apart X (dated 2002), also by Anthony Gormley, reminds me of ...

.... Ma'aseyahu (2012) by Boaz Vaadia.  I saw this piece at the Gardens for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey.

Palm Springs Art Museum has a collection of glass art.

Remember this from our trip to the Corning Museum of Glass?

Old Couple on a Bench by Duane Hanson was different in scale from, but still reminded me of ...

... Crossing Paths by Seward Johnson.

     Is this a special art genre?  Why so many headless things?

Recling Figure (For Rome) by Thomas Houseago

This is one of three headless works by Anslem Kiefer called Women of Antiquity.

Headless babies in red onesies - why??

     Corny, but true, we lost our heads over Palm Springs.    

Horseback Riding at Smoketree Stables

     I was never the kind of kid who wanted a pony.  I wasn't moved by My Friend Flicka (book, movie, or television series), and it seemed that keeping an animal as large as a pony would be too much work.  However, I liked animals in general, so at summer camp when I was nine years old, I rode a horse once around a fenced enclosure.  It was an okay experience, so eight years later, when a boy invited me to go horseback riding at the Flying W, I agreed.  About ten years ago, I drove all the way to Elmer, New Jersey to take my niece on a trail ride.  Until March 17, 2017, that was my experience atop horses in toto.
     Smoketree Stables was a five minute car ride from our hotel in Palm Springs.  I wanted to see if I could still hoist myself up into a saddle, so I convinced Mike to try horseback riding.  We spent a little over an hour meandering through the California desert enjoying the land and the vegetation. We saw a desert cotton tail rabbit.  They have longer ears than east coast rabbits, and they are out and about in the morning. We also saw a roadrunner (beep, beep).

Welcome to Smoketree Stables.

While some might choose to wear a cowboy hat, we decided to play it safe and wear helmets.

They are just funnin' ya.

These guys are waiting their turn to carry some tourist around.

Mike looks ready.

I rode Ben and Mike rode Rocky.  You don't need any horse back riding experience to take this type of trail ride.  A guide leads the way.  The horses know the route by heart.  They plod along without the rider giving them any direction.  They only thing you have to do is slow them down at the end of the ride since they tend to race toward the barn at the finish.  In case you have been wondering, I did need just a little boost to swing myself into the saddle.

        

The Desert Blooms

     The Palm Springs locals told us the mountains have not been green for ten years.  The winter's record snowfalls and the spring's plentiful rains have germinated long dormant seeds. There is color everywhere.  We feel fortunate to have seen 2017's flower display.  It could be another decade until the desert blooms again.

Yellow is the predominant color.

Roadsides are lined with the cars of flower photographers.  Tour operators bring people out by the bus load. 

Besides the wild flowers, this area was covered with tall, spiky plants called octillo.  Most of the time they look like dead sticks.  Green leaves sprout along the full length of the stems when it rains, and red flowers bloom at the end of the stalks.

Octillo Flower

These are Desert Dandelions (Malocothryx glabrata).  Dandelions!  No wonder the predominant color is yellow.

This blue flower is a member of the Phacelia family.

The white flowers are White Pincushion.

So much green.

Palm Springs, California

     We went to Palm Springs in January 2016 and experienced colder than normal temperatures, rain and flash floods, and an earthquake.  We decided to give the desert another try, and we are glad we did.  We spent the first day walking around downtown Palm Springs.

Sonny Bono is a Palm Springs icon.  This is his star on the Palm Springs Walk of Fame.

Sonny sits next to his star.  

After paying my respects to Sonny, I had a talk with Lucille Ball.

Mike posed with Marilyn Monroe.

This is the home of Cornelia B. White, a Palm Springs pioneer.  Yes, the people who came to settle this desert spot in the late 1800s and early 1900s were called pioneers.  This house is built from recycled railroad ties.  Cornelia lived on this spot from 1913 to 1961.  

The bedroom is charming.

The parlor is elegant.

They might have been living in the desert, but they still had a formal dining room.

I wonder if Ms. White always had the luxury of a pump at the kitchen sink.  I'm thinking the water source might have been a bit less convenient back in 1913.

I also think this bathroom might have been installed in the 1930s or 1940s.

I love all these examples of crocheted lace.

This piece of crewel work is lovely.

This is the 1884 adobe home of John McCallum.  It was the first adobe structure built in the Coachella Valley.  This home and the home of Cornelia White are owned by the Palm Springs Historical Society.  The McCallum house was not originally located on this site.  It was taken apart and reassembled here, next to the Cornelia White home.

Adobe walls - thicker than me.

The general store exhibit is a feast for the eyes.

General stores stocked everything you might need - kind of like Wal-mart.

Such a well stocked drug store.

There was a time when I could have used some of Baldwin's Herbal Female Pills!