Palm Desert's Art Scene by Hal Peat
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While nothing surpasses nature’s design in southern California’s desert plains with its cacti and boulders shadowed by rose and ochre mountains, humanity has also brought its creative flourishes in the towns that lie just off Highway 111. These begin with world-renowned Palm Springs, but continue into neighboring Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells and Palm Desert. However, it is the city of Palm Desert’s evolution as a community driven both by civic and commercial awareness of the benefits of a strong art presence that nowadays distinguishes it in the urban landscape of this region.
That commitment to art saw Palm Desert become the first in Riverside County to institute a public art program over two decades ago. Since then, city law has required all developers to place art in a publicly visible area or to pay a fee to the Art in Public Place fund for each new structure built.
The result has been that the city - and most notably the El Paseo shopping strip and 72-acre Civic Center Park - is nowadays dotted with large-scale sculptures of various styles and mediums. A recent El Paseo exhibition included amongst the 18 works along the stylish main drag such installments as a seven-foot dancer made of bronze, a hammered aluminum tree trunk, and a giant steel paintbrush.
How to See the Art
Additionally, El Paseo is nowadays home to more than 20 galleries in the span of one mile, currently exhibiting everyone from Tom Wesselmann to Claire Falkenstein. With this wealth of downtown galleries, the wide-ranging outdoor art installation program, and busy calendars of art events and organized tours, there is a rich menu of points of interest and activity for any traveler to explore year-round.
The ideal starting point to work from may actually be the city’s public art department: request online or pick-up their Art and Architecture City Guide Map to get your bearings and set your local art itinerary. Even a quick glance at the locations dotted on their map reveals that art in public places has proliferated from the town’s northernmost end near the I-10 Freeway to the southern extremities along Highway 74.
The largest concentration of installations and sites, however, remains those clustered on and around both the stretches of El Paseo and such major public institutions as the Civic Center Park, College of the Desert, and the Palm Desert Library. The City has designed its schedule of monthly (except July and August) one-hour long Public Art Walking Tours around these art-concentrated urban points. On the second Saturday of the month, each of these three locales serve in turn as the focal point of a tour that commences at 10:00 am. If you are part of a group of four or more, you can also schedule a free private tour based on your group’s particular interests.
Yet another easy viewing option is the monthly El Paseo Art Walk, organized by the city in collaboration with local galleries and studios. This early evening exploration takes place on the first Thursday of the month; participants stop off at the latest gallery exhibits for the opportunity to view current exhibits, occasionally meet the artists, chat with local gallery owners and mingle with other aficionados. For those who might have time to attend a sit-down educational or indoor event, the Palm Desert Community Gallery has both occasional seminars and exhibit openings throughout the year.
Balancing the Aesthetic and the Functional
With so much else at work that might capture the attention of visitors strolling the downtown thoroughfares—be it the world-class upscale commercial display, the architectural diversity or the almost equally colorful parade of humanity—those involved most directly with public art installation have some interesting decisions to make.
As Public Art Manager Richard Twedt succinctly explains the process: “We actually hire an outside or independent curator to do that--that way, it’s sort of an unbiased approach. Also, because we vary the curators, it’s their aesthetic and their version of what they select, so we’re not getting the same thing and the same kind of look every two years.”
Along with all that, he acknowledges the possible challenges of the context that any curator must contend with: “For instance, this show that’s out there right now, the curator is an artist who does large scale sculpture. Russell went out with just about every entry and tried to visualize where each piece would show the best in the 18 pads that we have out there.
A lot of thought is put into the location, the environment; there’s a lot of stuff going on out there on El Paseo so the art has to compete with the banners, the street lights, the palm trees, the landscaping, the cars, the signage, all that kind of stuff. It’s kind of a jigsaw puzzle, and putting the pieces in the places where they work.”
This inventive blend of practical and artistic, along with the mix of art events and tours, has taken a good deal of planning to bring to its present vibrant dimension. That goes for both the public and private arenas, which occasionally intersect not only in physical proximity but in the involvement of people and what is being produced, displayed or marketed.
Diversification and inventiveness is clearly the key to being viable at some enterprises, since it is not only along intersections of El Paseo but at even more unexpected locales that the cohabitation of art and commerce will catch your eye. That may happen anywhere from outside a residential development to the exterior entrances of banks and business offices.
All the time, the presence and variety grows along with Palm Desert’s own rapid expansion of recent years. As Twedt points out in conclusion about the city’s art ordnance: “We have an art ordnance for developers, and when it’s possible I tell them that our council likes to see the art, so if they have a development that faces a busy street usually the art work will be out front so people can see it. “
Meanwhile, examples of commercial resourcefulness in transforming properties into artistic enterprises also dot the landscape. Take the Desert Art Collection: this former motel building has been brilliantly renovated into a diversified series of floor spaces that encompass a fine art gallery with periodic new exhibits; an interior design business with art objects and materials from around the globe; and a sculpture garden that now sits in the former small hotel’s center court.
Whether it happens to be an encounter with an abstract creation in bronze or metal, a fanciful interpretation of human or other living shapes in wood, plastic or glass, a rendering that reflects the desert’s ancient cultures, or just a building reinvented to reflect the artistic spirit of the community, each drive or walk you make around Palm Desert becomes part of an ongoing local journey into an inventive urban landscape that goes on being a truly unending aesthetic treat