Wednesday, September 23, 2015

KCET's Art Bound on Noah Purifoy

Noah Purifoy's Desert Art Museum

The Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture, open to the public, illustrates the artist's vision during the last 15 years of his life.

In Joshua Tree, a Desert Blooms

A little slice of what's happening along the North border to Joshua Tree National Park... 

TRAVEL + LEISURE  
On a sauna-hot afternoon in Yucca Valley, a town 12 miles west of Joshua Tree National Park, Ryan Schneider, a painter from Brooklyn and a recent transplant to the area, was standing in the backyard of his rental house, showing me his work. His colorful, primitivist, abstract paintings (currently on view at Santa Monica’s Richard Heller Gallery) were affixed to the wood siding on the back of the house, which had that weathered, faded patina you find everywhere in the desert. In the early mornings and late afternoons, when the light falls just so, Schneider has been using the spot as a makeshift, open-air studio. Enticed by such easy living, he and his partner, Dana Balicki, a life coach, came to Joshua Tree in February to escape the harsh New York winter and by May had decided to move for good, soon finding a bigger place (and getting married). “I just needed to get out, go to the desert, and plug in to that energy that is so palpable here,” said Schneider, who is as warm and friendly as he is bearded and tattooed. “With the quiet and the calm out here,” he added, “the imagery that comes out of me is so much more bizarre.” As he spoke, I became aware of the loud silence, punctuated only by the sound of distant wind chimes. 

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