I left you on Friday 14th March as I drove out of the LA rain toward Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley sunshine. For those of you not familiar with the Coachella Valley let me orientate you - it is part of the Colorado Desert extending north westward for 45 miles (70 km) from the Salton Sea. It is 15 miles (25 km) wide and lies between the Little San Bernardino Mountains and the San Jacinto Moutains (east) and the Santa Rosa (west).
Those are the dry (see what I did there? It’s a desert) facts. But they don’t give you the breathtaking, extraordinary and slightly bizarre colour and flavour that makes this place so seductive.
The first city you reach driving in from LA is Palm Springs – the place where I attended Junior High and High School from the age of 12 – 16. I made indelible memories and lifelong friends. Some of whom I met for dinner when I fnally arrived after 5 hours on the road. Rain, freeway hell and 50 years melted away as we reminisced, ate, drank and enjoyed hearing each others’ stories whilst examining each others’ faces and comparing what our life experiences had written there.
Saturday March 15th
I spend the day with Susan. We go for a long walk in the Indian Canyons, reminisce and catch up. In High School we’d been best friends. She was going to be a writer, I was going to be an actress. After I returned to England, our friendship ebbed and flowed. She became a journalist, I worked in rep theatre. She moved into documentary filmmaking, I went to film school. We lost touch.
She won awards. I became a film professor in the US and invited her to speak to my students. We picked up like no time had passed at all. Since then, Susan and I have travelled together, swapped projects, mentored each other, and generally kept each other upright through various artistic mid-life reinventions as well as motherhood, widowhood, divorcehood and grandmotherhood.
And now, here we are—full circle. Back in Palm Springs, daring each other to jump into the waterfall at Tahquitz Canyon. The world turns, and turns again. Everything changes. Nothing changes.
Sunday March 16th
My daughter arrived from Canada last night. She’s here on a work trip to visit Desert X, a biennial international art exhibition of site-specific installations. I’m here to visit my daughter. Susan is here to visit me.
The three of us set off for Coachella, in search of a mural from Desert X 2011. ‘Coachella’ is the glitzy music festival held on the obsessively manicured Polo Grounds in Palm Springs (where, yes, polo is still actually played). But the town of Coachella, about 25 miles away, is a very different place—no nightclubs, no high-end car showrooms, no collectables. Just sun, dust, and a community, many of them migrants, rooted in agricultural work.
There were no signs to guide us, so we wandered through a stretch of burnt-out industrial buildings—until we were greedily thrilled to stumble upon a bakery selling Mexican sweet treats, which we took as a good omen. Sure enough, just around the side, we found it: La Fiesta en el Desierto by Armando Lerma. A vivid mural dedicated to the anonymous farm worker, full of colour and pride—equal parts celebration and struggle.
There were more. Walking a different route back to the car, it starts to feel like a treasure hunt—one vivid, evocative mural after another, tucked along side streets and alleyways.
With reception back on our phones, we do a quick search and discover that in 2016, the town launched the Coachella Walls: American Woman project.
We almost forget we're here for Desert X— sophisticated, international curated art. But isn’t this how art should be? Rooted in the community, recording struggle, celebrating labour—right there in plain sight, waiting to be found.
We are sated and satisfied but have a schedule to keep to so set off for Salvation Mountain at Slab City near the Salton Sea. Built over 24 years from adobe bricks, tires, windows, car parts, and thousands of gallons of donated paint, the 50-foot-high, 150-foot-wide mountain was the lifelong obsession of Leonard C. Knight.
Two miles up the road we stop at the dystopian East Jesus ‘art gallery’. An experimental, sustainable, habitable art installation started by Charlie Russel in 2006, East Jesus is a sprawling 30 acre museum dedicated to large-scale art using reclaimed materials. It is awe-inspiring in its inventiveness, daunting in the sheer variety and volume of discarded materials used in the artworks.
Monday March 17th
My daughter has other work to do alongside visiting art installations, and I still have a book to finish. I brought the manuscript with me—printed out, as my mentor advised. It’s ridiculously bulky, and I questioned my sanity carting it all the way out to California. But now I’m glad I did.
We’re staying in a lovely house through HomeExchange (an interesting and cheap way to travel), complete with loungers, a palm tree, and a hot tub. I feel like the quintessential Hollywood writer—swimsuit on, pencil in one hand, manuscript in the other, chai tea by my elbow.
We spend the morning industriously, then head out to Murray Canyon for a short hike. (My daughter calls all walks “hikes” now—very North American. I don’t know the exact difference, and suspect I’m being pedantic just asking.) Whatever it is called, my breath is totally taken away both by the climb and the beauty. Baked brown mountains are carved against the sky, palm trees with thick skirts of leaves, cactus with sunlit haloes. It is a Desert X, Y & Z of a show.
Later, we pick up a brochure from the Desert X office and visit our first official artist’s installation: simple, striking—two mirrored clouds on poles, hovering against the mountains.
Tuesday March 18th
Guilty secret – We spent the day at the Spa at Sec-he. A birthday present from my daughter – obviously not a secret anymore.
Leave the Spa glowing and visit Exhibit no .9 - Adobe Oasis by Ronald Rael. A cluster of 3D printed adobe walls , their surfaces almost basket-woven in texture.. The sun, low in the sky, warms the earthen curves as it sets behind a lone palm tree standing tall at the centre.
Wednesday & Thursday March 19th & 20th
More writing. More hiking. More Desert X – My favourite two so far: Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams by Sarah Meyohas and What Remains by Muhannad Shono, fabric arranged across several acres of desert, designed to move with the wind and sand, amplifying the ever-changing state of the dunes.
Friday March 21st
I have arranged for us to meet another Palm Springs friend at the Sunnyland Estate, situated on the surreally named Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope Drive. The estate has 9 acres of desert gardens and some significant art – there’s a Rodin and a Giacometti just hanging out in the entrance to the Vistors’ Centre.
But we were there for the free yoga on the lawn and the Desert X installation plonked right in the middle of it. The yoga instructors were asked by the curators what kind of artwork they’d like on their patch of grass. They answered, “a pyramid” and that’s exactly what they got: a pyramid made of desert and mountain wildflowers, blooming quietly as we ‘ommmm’d’.
I’m ashamed to say that as we ‘omme’d’ my mind went full bumper sticker -
PS I Love You.