Steve & I Do Palm Springs...

Looking for a fun Saturday escape, Steve and I headed back to Palm Springs for a day of shorts weather.


When we arrived, the main thoroughfare, Palm Canyon Dr., was completed deserted and closed. As we sipped coffees at a French bistro, the reason became quiet clear.



The Black History Month Parade began at 11 a.m. with a flyover from a historic Tuskegee Airmen Redtail P-51 airplane, courtesy of the Palm Springs Air Museum.

"The City of Palm Springs recognizes the rich culture, history, and important accomplishments of our African American community and the work of the Palm Springs Black History Committee," said Mayor Jeffrey Bernstein. "We invite the entire Coachella Valley to join us as we celebrate Black History Month and the significant contributions our African American citizens."
Those who don't know, Mr. Blackwell was a very interesting character in the fashion world. It is not surprising that, in 1997, a Golden Palm Star on the Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. Fun stuff. You never know who you will find underfoot here.
One of the reasons for the trek to the desert was another visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum.
As a pioneer of the Light and Space movement, artist Norman Zammitt (1931-2007) extensively explored color relationships and geometric patterns through his abstract paintings and sculptures.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, Zammitt produced an innovative series of transparent sculptures made of painted sheets of glass and acrylic plastic. These layered constructions led to his experiments during the mid-1970s through the 1980s creating paintings with neatly defined bands of sequential colors.
While investigating different approaches to mixing and arranging colors, he developed a mathematical method of blending hues based on logarithmic progressions. This exhibition features examples of the artist’s rigorously composed hard-edge band paintings as well as his looser, more spontaneous “fractal” paintings inspired by chaos theory.
His work was large and quite amazing. I'm glad we had the opportunity to admire it.
I loved Yaacov Agam's Paris. Both photos are the same image. So dang cool.






I love the name of this painting by Paul Jenkins Phenomena Wind off Big Sur.
I thought Fugue (c. 1956) by Byron Browne really capture mid-century modern. I liked this piece.
Trained at Chouinard Art Institute (which became part of CalArts), Noah Purifoy made art from found objects, which he believed were imbued with meaning and traces of the past. An influential figure in L.A's Black Arts Movement, Purifoy's earliest sculptures were constructed from the debris of the 1965 Watts rebellion.
In 1989, Purifoy moved to Joshua Tree, where he created artworks on ten acres of land. This relief was made there from junkyard elements, such as radiator parts and polished plaques. Purifoy used these objects as referents to the world, saying, "I don't thoroughly understand my relationship with the human being. But I do thoroughly understand the function of a radiator."
The weather was too nice to stay indoors for long so we found ourselves in a new-to-us sculpture garden.


No matter how often I return to Palm Springs, new things are constantly discovered. That is truly WONDERFUL.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My Mom has history at Chouinard - she references it on occasion. You'll have to ask her about it some time. :-)

Erin Marlowe said...

Prior comment was from me

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