save the date: 'from dreams i had of flowers' at 29 palms art gallery, sept 2023
my first solo art show 💖 reception sat, sep 2 from 4-6p
Greetings from a sweltering desert summer! I’m delighted to announce my first solo(-ish) show — ‘from dreams i had of flowers’ — this coming September at 29 Palms Art Gallery in 29 Palms, California.
The opening exhibition will be held Saturday, September 2nd from 4-6p. It’s the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, so if you don’t have long weekend plans, come spend them with us in the desert!
The show will be running from Thursday, August 31st through Sunday, October 1st and the gallery is opened 11-3p Thursday-Sunday or by appointment. If you come to the desert for it, I’d be happy to also host you for a studio visit at my nearby home and recommend some places to stay and things to do.
My show will be exhibited in the West Gallery and I’ll be joined by local photographer Jon Norris who will be exhibiting his show, “Seven Years in the Desert,” in the East Gallery. Grace Alley, a local ceramicist, will also exhibit her work.
29 Palms Art Gallery is one of our most charming local galleries, located close to the Joshua Tree National Park entrance in 29 Palms (the town next to Joshua Tree) and set in a large, pueblo style home. The gallery hosts a local artists’ guild and plenty of youth and local programming in the arts. They do wonderful work and I am honored to have had my work chosen to kick-off their 2023-2024 show season with my largest show to date. You can read more about the gallery here.
As a note, I’ll also be opening my home studio here in Joshua Tree for the first two weekends of Highway 62 Art Tours, Oct 7/8 and 14/15. More on that soon. And more on this to come in September. 🌸
On 'from dreams i had of flowers:'
An excerpt from my submitted abstract for the show; abstract is edited for clarity.
“I increasingly believe abstraction is the truest form of seeing: a seeing beyond seeing, an attempt to express that which is visible beneath the ‘visible’ world.
Our eyes often deceive us; they keep us slave to form and line, when really, everything is made of light and values and color. I see this over and over again in the desert: the swirling sand makes it hard to determine where ground ends and sky begins, the sun reflects off drops of moisture or leaves of creosote in a way that explodes it into rays of a million subtle colors. And I see this over and over again, the more I observe flowers.
Flowers, whose subtle colors grow more vibrant with observation, flowers who make “no sounds at all” but yet who seem to speak more and more clearly to me.
Are these colors and voices real, or imagined? And in any case, how are they captured and made visible onto canvas? How do we make manifest the most subtle of messages?”
— alex maceda, may 2023