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Antelope Valley homesteader, William Peter “the Dutchman” Helfrich (1876 – 1939), immigrated to the Antelope Valley from the Netherlands. When he arrived at the Antelope Valley, he claimed and homesteaded over 300 acres of land between Quartz Hill and Leona Valley. He never married, remaining a life-long bachelor. This allowed him to pursue his wide variety of interests, as he worked as a wheat farmer, almond rancher, cattleman, astronomer, meteorologist, linguist, and botanist. Helfrich worked as a clerk at the Belleview school as well, with part of his responsibility being to haul drinking water for the students and other staff members since the school lacked running water. He was considered an integral part of his community and was well-liked by all those who knew him. He became known for his work as a meteorologist in the 1930s, gaining recognition for his success in accurately forecasting the weather months and even years in advance. He reportedly claimed that he based his forecasts on astronomy, gauging the relative positions of the Earth and other planets and their respective gravitational influence. Helfrich’s little wooden house can still be found on Roger and Frances Lane Hughes’s property. "Gurba, Norma H. Legendary Locals of the Antelope Valley. Arcadia, 2013. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

This photograph, c. 1912, shows the Cram General Merchandise Store in the background as the third building from the left. Homesteader and early Antelope Valley pioneer Charles H. Cram (1863 – 1924) played an important role in the development of the community. Originally from Chicago, Charles came to California to homestead in the Fairmont area of the western Antelope Valley. His immediate family also came to California and established a ranch about 30 miles from his property. Charles married Ysabel “Belle” Del Valle (1868 – 1936), a daughter of the prominent Del Valle family, in 1896 with her joining him in the Antelope Valley. Belle became heavily involved in the community as well, participating in Women’s events and leading the women’s and children’s rabbit hunting festivities. While living in the Fairmont area, Charles owned and operated a small merchandise store from around 1895 to 1904. When Charles left this store for other endeavors, his brother became the manager. From 1904 to 1912, Charles owned and operated the Cram General Merchandise Store in Lancaster, which was located on present-day Lancaster Boulevard and Sierra Highway. Charles and Ysabel lived just above the shop, on the second floor of the building. Charles was heavily involved in promoting the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct as well, selling a significant amount of supplies to the project’s workforce. The Cram General Merchandise Store burnt down in 1912 during one of the most destructive fires in Lancaster history. They could not manage to rebuild, forcing the family to move to Los Angeles and stay with Ysabel’s sister, though they continued to visit Lancaster. Charles passed away on one visit to the Antelope Valley while staying at the Palmdale Inn in 1924. "Gurba, Norma H. Legendary Locals of the Antelope Valley. Arcadia, 2013. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

Ezra "Struck-it-Rich" Hamilton (1833 - 1914) is most often credited with being the first man to strike gold in the Antelope Valley, turning him into a successful gold miner. While this is a huge feat on it's own, he is also responsible for the founding and development of the Willow Springs community. As part of the town of Willow Springs, Ezra constructed a small elementary school for the community in 1904. One of the first teachers of this school was young Emily Baugh (1889 - 1973). Emily had secured her position after graduating from the Los Angeles State Normal School with an Elementary Teaching Certificate in 1910. Her motivation for moving to Willow Springs and working as a teacher was to finance her own further education; she had dreams of earning a doctorate in Geography. While teaching at Willow Springs Elementary School, Emily was made aware of the unique geological and geographical aspects of the Antelope Valley and began conducting field research. In 1926, she was able to complete her master's thesis, which was titled "The Antelope Valley: A Study in Regional Geography". After the completion of her thesis, she took intermittent teaching positions at both University of California Berkeley and Los Angeles. In 1953, Dr. Baugh became the first woman to achieve full professorship in the history of the UCLA Geography department. She was also among the first 10 women to ever be promoted to highest academic rank on the UCLA faculty.

Robert Benitez (MOAH) and Suzy Silvestre (LPAC) completed the 9 month fellowship in Cultural Policy through the Arts for LA ACTIVATE Program. They graduated last night at a ceremony at the California African American Museum (in Exposition Park) sponsored by Boeing, Department of Cultural Affairs City of Los Angeles, Hewlett Foundation, ArtsEd Collective, Rosenthal Family Foundation and the Lewis L. Borick Foundation. This fellowship designed for emerging leaders was highly competitive with over 250 nominees of which 72 were chosen. We are so proud of Robert and Suzy for their Bridging the Arts Initiative – implemented here in Lancaster connecting performing artists and visual artists together for the benefit of young AV students. The first Bridging the Arts program included a talk between Black Violin and MLK activist photographer Wyatt Kenneth Coleman that was attended by over 50 guests the majority of them students from AV High School – after the talk the students were given comped tickets to the Black Violin performance at LPAC.

The Antelope Valley has seen numerous strong women contribute their lives to various efforts regarding conservation and human rights. Katherine Philips Edson (1870 - 1933) was one such woman. Katherine is considered to be one of the earliest grassroots activists of the Antelope Valley. Originally, Katherine was a fairly prominent opera singer and musician, eventually evolving into a suffragette and social reformer. She moved to the Lancaster area with her husband, Charles Edson, and his family in 1891. Their stay here was supposed to be short-lived, but the birth of their daughter, Katharane, in 1892 ultimately made them decide to stay more long-term. The Edsons, with the help of other locals, established the Antelope Valley's first social and cultural club in 1891, as a chapter of the national Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. The goal of the group was to provide an avenue for people of different backgrounds to discuss current and historic events. Katherine is also responsible for implementing several different "female round-ups", which acted as a gathering for local women to discuss the problems they faced. Katherine wrote an 1895 "Woman's Column", included in the Antelope Valley Gazette, campaigning for women's right to vote and discussing various social reform issues. After leaving the Antelope Valley for Los Angeles in 1899, Katherine became a political campaigner working for public health issues, women's suffrage, and minimum-wage legislation for California women, among a variety of other platforms. She also helped to establish the California League of Women Voters. "Gurba, Norma H. Legendary Locals of the Antelope Valley. Arcadia, 2013. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

Six different Native American tribes inhabited the Antelope Valley in the past; the Kitanemuk, Kawaiisu, Serrano, Tataviam, Vanyume, and the Chemehuevi. Little is known about these groups aside from personal accounts of individuals and the few instances of ethnographic and linguistic research done in the early 1900s, as well as the contributions made by archaeologists who have studied the material remains left behind by these cultures. One of the most common material remains left behind and studied by archaeologists in the area is stone tools – referred to by archaeologists as "lithic technology". Specific types of stone (such as rhyolite, chalcedony, jasper, chert, and obsidian) are ideal raw materials for such tool production. The common characteristic of these stones is their non-crystalline or smooth texture, which allows for a feature called “conchoidal fracturing”. Conchoidal fractures are described as smooth, curved breaks from the base of the stone. This breakage pattern allows the person forming the stone, also called the "flintknapper", to precisely control the reduction to make a wide variety of tools. The flint-knapping process involves striking a core of the selected raw material with a hammerstone to drive off a flake. The sharp flake that was just extracted can then be used as-is or can be modified further into a more specialized tool such as a biface or a projectile point. Lithic tools such as projectile points are often temporally and spatially diagnostic, meaning that they hold information regarding when and where the artifact was made. In this sense, they can be used to create a timeline of sorts. In this region of California, several arrowhead types are most prominent, including Lake Mojave Points, Pinto Points, Elko Points, Rose Springs Points, Cottonwood Triangular Points, and Desert Side-Notched Points. The artifact of focus today is not considered a projectile point, but a biface. Bifaces are another common type of lithic technology that are usually too large to be used as a projectile point. These tools were used as a prehistoric multi-tool and can function as a knife, a scraper, a pick, a chopper, or a weapon, among other things. Small bifaces can even be fixed to a shaft and used as a spearhead. They are called “biface” because they are knapped bilaterally; this means that they were intentionally shaped on both faces of the stone. This particular biface is made from a stone called rhyolite. Rhyolite is highly abundant in various places in the western end of the Antelope Valley, and was likely sourced from and used nearby one of these locations. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections

Though not a pioneer or a permanent resident, John Harrington (1884 - 1961) was a Smithsonian Institute linguist and ethnohistorian, renowned locally and worldwide for his efforts in studying and preserving Native American cultures. In total, he collected data and information on 90 different Native American languages. This is ultimately what brought Harrington to Lancaster. While in Lancaster to study some of the local Native American tribes, Mr. Harrington stayed extensively at the Western Hotel, beginning at around 1916. Harrington dedicated significant time and effort to the ethnographic study of the local Kitanemuk and Serrano tribes, especially regarding their linguistic practices. His efforts still continue to contribute to the preservation of these dialects, protecting aspects of such cultural heritage that would otherwise be lost in time, as is, unfortunately, the reality for many Native American tribes and other indigenous groups throughout the world. Much of what we know about these tribes today stem from the research that Harrington did in the area, with his ethnographic and linguistic studies offering an important and direct look into the lifestyles and practices of the local Kitanemuk and Serrano people. "Gurba, Norma H. Legendary Locals of the Antelope Valley. Arcadia, 2013. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

Another well-known local mining family is the Williams family. The father-and-son duo, Wade "Hamp" Williams Sr. (1817 - 1899) and Jr., each found success in the mining industry. Their big strikes were 58 years apart. In 1861, Wade Williams Sr. found success with his discovery of the Joe Walker Mine. His find was sold only a few days later at $2,000, severely underestimating its value. Its new owner, however, was much more successful; he reportedly made $25,000 in the first month alone and went on to become a millionaire. Wade Williams Jr. also tried his hand at prospecting, successfully striking on his first day at the Amelia Mine. In 1919, along with the help of another local miner, Jack Nosser, Wade Williams Jr. discovered silver at the Kelly Rand Mine. He later sold his share for $50,000. "Gurba, Norma H. Legendary Locals of the Antelope Valley. Arcadia, 2013. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

Mining has been a primary industry in the Antelope Valley since the area was first settled, with various natural resources being extracted such as gold, silver, copper, borax, and radium. Such mining exploits offered employment opportunities and economic endeavors to many local pioneers in the Antelope Valley’s early years. Women may not always come to mind when one imagines a miner, but the Antelope Valley hosted several women that were heavily integrated into the mining industry, seeking out these advantageous opportunities. Josephine “Josie” Stephens Bishop (1864 – 1951) arrived at the Antelope Valley in 1925, settling in Red Rock Canyon. Here she staked out 11 mining claims spanning across 170 acres of land. She became known locally as the “Radium Queen”, as well as “Mojave’s Madame Curie” and “America’s Number One Woman Desert Rat” after discovering one of her mining claims contained a radium-rich vein. Though she never formally studied geology, mineralogy, or chemistry, it is said that she could tell the full contents of rock just by looking at and feeling it. Ella B. Kinton (1866 – 1944) is another successful Antelope Valley miner. Though she arrived at the Antelope Valley near death in 1884, she made a quick recovery. Soon after this recovery, Ella had an accident involving a mule-train and cranial trauma. Despite this, she made another recovery, going on to become Rosamond’s first female Postmaster, serving from 1903 – 1910. In addition to this, she also ran her family’s general store, hotel, and stable. She also owned her own gold mine, the E.B.K. gold mine. Though she was not the owner of a mine, Donie B. Shumake (1891 – 1983) did work directly with the mining industry. Donie worked closely with the Burton Brothers, who owned and operated Rosamond’s Tropico Gold Mine, with the title of the chief clerk and office manager. She began this work in 1934, serving as California’s only female member of the Industrial Workers Mining and Milling Association at the time.

Saturday, May 12, 2018 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm Lancaster Museum of Arts and History 665 W Lancaster Blvd, Lancaster, California 93534, Lancaster CA 93534 In Town — Los Angeles and environs “High & Dry: Land Artifacts,” an exhibition comprising work by writer/historian Christopher Langley and photographer Osceola Refetoff, opens at MOAH on Saturday, May 12 with a reception from 4-6PM. The cross-platform show is part of a long-term collaboration between Langley and Refetoff that explores the realities and myths of the California desert and the people who live there. Refetoff’s infrared photography and Langley’s thoughtful text focus on both the remnants and destiny of these vast, open spaces – arid terrain that historically has been used for resource extraction, toxic dumping, and military-industrial exercises. Now, this dramatic topography faces a future dominated by immense wind and solar farms, and the complicated dynamics of critical resource allocation. The show runs through July 15. Through “High & Dry: Land Artifacts,” Langley and Refetoff seek to raise awareness about the changing utilization of the desert through engaging visual and literary storytelling, presenting the land itself as a principal character. The exhibition examines the things we’ve left behind and what they reveal about our civilization – as well as the legacy to come, to be written by the emergent energy-harvesting industry whose remains will undoubtedly include an abundance of huge turbines and photovoltaic cells. The artists’ hope is that their work will be part of a meaningful conversation regarding the choices being made in the land rush to install wind and solar arrays – and that those involved will consider development in the context of best serving the desert environment and its inhabitants. Their collaboration grew out of inspiration from legendary 20th century partnerships between writers and photographers commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA), including the work of Walker Evans with James Agee, and Dorothea Lange with Paul Taylor. In the spirit of those legendary projects, “High & Dry: Land Artifacts” seeks a balance of words and images, supporting each other via different perspectives – social, economic, geographical, and historical. Throughout his work, Los Angeles-based photographer Osceola Refetoff’s interest is in documenting humanity’s impact on the world – the intersection of nature and industry, and the narratives of the people living at those crossroads. He chose to record images for “High & Dry: Land Artifacts” through infrared exposures because of the medium’s aesthetic quality, and its ability to capture dramatic landscapes in “bad” midday light. The raw intensity of the desert’s vastness, and the graphic relationship between land and sky are accentuated. “It’s another kind of light, one we can’t actually see with our own eyes,” says Refetoff, “yet an accurate representation of the world, just through a different wavelength.” Christopher Langley is a life-long educator who has lived in and studied the Mojave Desert for more than 45 years. He and his wife, who met in the Peace Corps, wanted to raise a family, in a “severely rural” location outside the stream of everyday life; they love the desert and positively contributing to its evolution. Working as a film historian, founder of the Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine, and Inyo County Film Commissioner, he focuses on the desert’s complex relationship with cinema, and how land plays an essential role in the story of our lives. Co-founder of the Alabama Hills Stewardship Group, Langley’s environmental advocacy has won the National Conservation Cooperation Award. His writing is widely syndicated and includes three books on California’s arid landscape. Langley and Refetoff have collaborated since 2013 on High & Dry, which is a regular feature on KCET’s Emmy-winning program Artbound. “High & Dry: Land Artifacts” will be the first art exhibit to incorporate elements from MOAH’s permanent collection of historical artifacts. The artists encourage visitors to bring a single item – something non-toxic – that they would like to leave behind for future generations in a time capsule to be created in conjunction with this exhibit. Pictured: “Resting Place, Abandoned Kaiser Plant,” by Osceola Refetoff http://www.desertdispatches.com/ https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/projects/high-dry http://www.ospix.com/

High & Dry surveys the legacy of human enterprise in the California desert. Together, writer/historian Christopher Langley and photographer Osceola Refetoff document human activity, past and present, in the context of future development. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more…. – Macbeth (c. 1605), Act V, Scene 5, Line 23, Shakespeare We are all going to die — every last one of us. We leave everything behind as a kind of tally of how we lived. We leave our children, our thoughts, our possessions, our garbage, our beliefs and especially our bodies: the blood, gristle and bone Three Crosses - Infrared Exposure - Rosamond, CA - 2013 | Osceola Refetoff We leave everything we had, made, earned or stole behind. If judging is called for, we are judged by what we leave behind. We will never know just what that is for we will be gone. If there is awareness after we die, our attention will be on where we are going, not where we have been. Those before us: individuals, families, communities, tribes, states, nations and even empires have also left everything behind. Then the question while we are still alive is what can we learn from what has been left behind from before us? Nowhere are these instructive legacies and endowments more exposed than in the California deserts. Pioneer Cemetery - Infrared Exposure - Lone Pine, CA - 2013 | Osceola Refetoff Our lives are short. When compared to the landscape around us — the mountains, rivers, rocks, sand, volcanoes and earth fault disruptions — we are the proverbial mayfly. Given the brevity of our mortality, we swell with pride or shutter from embarrassment about what we have done to our home. The global impact of our human endeavors has been given a name: the Anthropocene. This dispatch and video accompany our exhibition “High & Dry: Land Artifacts” at the Museum of Art and History (MOAH) in Lancaster, California. The exhibit explores the meaning of things we leave behind in the desert and what they tell us about who we are as a culture. Incorporating many of these infrared photographs with historical objects from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition opens May 12, 4-6pm and runs through July 15. Visitors are encouraged to bring a single, meaningful item to leave in a time capsule for future generations. Examples of artifacts in the desert are the soda ash plants that formed an industrial necklace around Owens Dry Lake in Inyo County, California, now a gigantic reclamation and dust mitigation project undertaken by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). From a ruin perspective, the former Kaiser plant is perhaps the most fascinating. Owens Lake was once the largest single source of particulate pollution in the U.S. Windblown Sand - Infrared Exposure - Highway 136 North of Keeler CA - 2013 | Osceola Refetoff From a distance, the Kaiser Soda Ash ruin is diminutive. Its angular and geometric silhouette entices the inquisitive vision of the attentive traveler speeding by on Highway 395. At high speeds, seeing the turnoff is tricky. When you come up to the ruin, the stillness of the concrete forms, varied in size, shape and unknown in purpose, beguile the imagination. The setting spreads out to the east in a gaping vista. The playa of the dry Owens Lake, not far from Cartago, California, dances and shimmers in the heat, its mineral crust of trona effervescent like diamonds in the refracting desert light. Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns - Infrared Exposure - Owens Lake, CA - 2013 | Osceola Refetoff The Kaiser soda ash factory remains enthralling because the workers were inexplicably drawn away before the structure was fully demolished. The ruin has eight rhomboid concrete prisms in two rows of four each. Two of these forms are molded together, poured separately but abutted. They have buttresses, which support the last two prisms, for unknown reasons. Holes pierce these prisms for either steel or wood supports or pipe connections. There are four cement frames filled with broken bricks marked by mortar. To the north are what appear to be giant pedestals — geometric mushrooms with square, thick caps and substantial stems. Some are upright as intended. Others have fallen on their side and can’t get up. Octagonal holes are cut into solid walls. Everywhere rebar rest like twisted bones once coupled to the machinery now long gone. Resting Place - Abandoned Kaiser Plant - Owens Lake, CA - 2016 | Osceola Refetoff Is Kaiser more a ruin or a wasteland? We celebrate ruins and denigrate wastelands. I would argue that wastelands are the denigrated ruins of modernity. With horror or despair, we stare at the wasteland, matching within us our loss of hope, faith and love. The wasteland mocks and reflects the futility of our failed cultural, social, and economic endeavors. Today, we watch as disintegrating trailers and transitory dwellings inevitably make way for massive solar utilities, themselves undoubtedly becoming ruins in turn as our energy economy evolves. I kneel before an automobile grill of a totally imploded, rusted car that now grins like a lipless death's head at the Kaiser ruin. The teeth are metal, sunk into the jaws. They are long, sickly yet arrogant. It is a Cubist Picasso sculpture of a head. Can a photograph conjure meaning from the wastelands, the mines, the dead factories and the weathered crosses all drained of vitality by the cruelty of life in the desert? Mountain Shack Above Owens Lake - Infrared Exposure - Cerro Gordo, CA - 2014 | Osceola Refetoff Besides our feelings of wasted resources in these wasteland landscapes, an additional source of anxiety is the sense of decay of our cultural heritage. The landscape evolves from ruins that show cultural balance and continuity to rust that announces waste and disillusion. Any aware person is worrying about the limited future of natural resources, the expansion of pollution and the instability of social and political structures. As with car wrecks we drive by on the freeway, it is difficult to avert our eyes from the wasteland. We are irresistibly drawn there, our staring eyes at least. There is a macabre beauty that sings to our soul of our true situation. So, it is with the wasteland. It is about hope and the loss of hope. We fear we are in decline. It is a personal and a collective fear. In the desert things are left behind to tell the story of change, impermanent success and the total failure of human enterprise. Crews began the takedown of the superstructure but gave up at the cement forms, rectangular prisms, pyramids and blocks with pre-made apertures. Exactly why they stopped could have been the difficulty of dealing with so much cement, or because the salvage of materials was of little or no value. Our Churches (Sierra Wave) - Infrared Exposure - Trona, CA - 2011 | Osceola Refetoff I sit in the ruin until nightfall. The yellow golden light rusts to red, and then slowly fades to dark beige as the Milky Way appears, growing stronger in the darkening sky. The stars wink and twinkle. It is very peaceful. Looking from these ruins, I see the strange beauty of this opalescent yet desolate landscape that has been savaged because it harbored minerals, water and game. We have been an animal that sacrificed our homeland for what we wanted or what we thought we had to have. We use and plunder the earth without much thought to the repercussions. Yet now we want to restore the damaged landscape, forced by laws, public opinion and the wavering intention to do what’s right as long as it doesn’t unduly erode the bottom line. Kaiser has set the scene. Now we move on to memorials. The desert is dotted with plaques commemorating events and famous or infamous folks. Although I would argue today we are drawn to forgetting, there is still some allegiance to history, especially if it is odd or unusual. Leaving Trona - Infrared Exposure - CA Highway 178 - 2011 | Osceola Refetoff As you near Trona, a once vibrant mining town, there is a memorial plaque celebrating the brave souls who ventured out of Death Valley looking for water in Searles Lake. The water is so brackish as to be undrinkable. For one of the groups traveling to the gold fields, it is a kind of Donner Party in the desert: no snow, no cannibalism, but significant death. The memorial states: NO. 443 VALLEY WELLS - In this area, several groups of midwestern emigrants who had escaped from hazards and privations in Death Valley in 1849 sought to secure water from Searles Lake. They turned northward and westward in despair when they discovered its salty nature, and with great difficulty crossed the Argus and other mountains to reach settlements of Central and Southern California. Searles Valley Minerals Plant - Infrared Exposure - Trona, CA - 2010 | Osceola Refetoff In those days, the deserts were a terrible place that had to be endured. Now they are seen as harsh but beautiful, rich in resources and not just made for toxic chemical dumping and nuclear testing. But as the plaque commemorates, the desert can be bitter. It defeats through economic and social factors towns such as Trona, once a thriving settlement extracting valuable minerals from the saline waters. While some of the remaining residents don’t see Trona as dying, many more have relocated. Nearby Ridgecrest is a prime area with most of the amenities modern life affords. In Trona, a desert wasteland is invading and will eventually swallow up the town, if not the mining operations. Abandoned, now burned out residences stand as warnings that economics is one of the biggest challenges in the deserts. Fiscal concerns are greater than natural forces. Budgetary acumen is as important, more important, than proper clothing, housing, food and water. We learn that from the wastelands and memorials, as well as the ruins. Remains of the Minecart Trestle - Infrared Exposure - Cerro Gordo, CA - 2012 | Osceola Refetoff The mining industry has left many kinds of bones and industrial structures, some old and useless, others still working. A complex of pulleys, conveyor belts and machinery at the Red Hill cinder mine reminds me of an alien parasite sucking at the earth. Up at Cerro Gordo silver camp in the Owens Valley, a mining structure becomes a giant praying mantis. The huge factory at Trona reminds me of a ragtag town devoted to processing soda ash from the lake brine. Carrying borax out of Trona, a train curves out towards the desert horizon. Infrastructures are laid bare in arid lands. A cylindrical water tank holding the small town of Lone Pine’s water contrasts with the rounded foothills of the surrounding mountains. Of course, water is usually the number one topic in these areas. The big city to the south long ago absconded with the valley's water to quench its thirsty hordes. Silos now scar the landscape, agricultural tombstones marking the dead farms. Abandoned PPG Plant - Infrared Exposure - Bartlett, CA - 2012 | Osceola Refetoff Still, there are many signs of faith that residents rely on to get through the dark desert nights. A sign in Trona says “Prayer Changes Things,” just as the modern angular Catholic church seems to await the faithful’s return. Three crosses near Highway 14 in Rosamond proclaim someone’s theological idea, perhaps of the Trinity. Near the Salton Sea, a dead tree is festooned with giant stick nests of lesser egrets and other marsh birds that land, breed and migrate on, reminding us that nature can still prevail. The arid lands of California are littered with personal artifacts from pioneers, developers, businessmen and tourists. It may start as abandoned garbage or structures, but given fifty years, it can become a protected artifact. Cans and bottles are a collector’s treasure and their market and trade are easy to find on eBay. Also left behind to become artifacts and gain a new kind of repurposed value are tools for mining, ranching and building. These artifacts tell stories, have a rusted yet bemusing lost purpose and a distinct rustic beauty. They are now collectibles. St. Madeleine Catholic Church - Infrared Exposure - Trona, CA - 2010 | Osceola Refetoff Often groups of people are known through archeological analysis of dumps and abandoned work areas, understood primarily by the refuse thrown out. The Tropico Gold Mine outside of Rosamond, California has one of the biggest time capsules around. It was purposely assembled and sealed in one of the mine’s tunnels. However, the sign on the metal door was stolen. It is to be opened in a thousand years. It is not uncommon to see areas of the desert littered with broken glass, rusted tin cans, garbage, refuse and trash. Those are some of the names for abandoned material that is deemed to have little or no value. Piles of household objects are left abandoned, particularly useless, scarred, vandalized and discarded furniture that no one would give household room. Particularly common are broken and ravaged recliners, sofas and over-stuffed chairs. They sit in the desert decaying as if waiting for someone to come, pause, sit and watch the desert fill with light, or be concealed in the growing darkness of sunset. But the chairs wait for no one, for that’s who is coming. Every great society or empire has left behind a network of roads. In time, however, the roads lead to places no longer populated or profitable. Even the best-laid routes will eventually succumb to the dust. Serpentine Boxcars - Infrared Exposure - Searles, CA - 2010 | Osceola Refetoff Edward Humes, a Pulitzer-prize winning author, gives us lots of facts about our world in his book “Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash.” He reports that in a year we throw out collectively 390 million tons of rubbish, or “municipal solid waste.” Statistics abound, and they are scary. Many persons carelessly or purposefully dispose of garbage because the desert is seen as a vast, useless dumping ground. Much of our project work to prove otherwise. Hume’s comments, “Landfills are usually thought of, when they are thought of at all, as out-of-the-way places. Nobody really wants to think about what they contain… The material that seeps out of (them), a noxious brew called ‘leachate,’ is so toxic that it has to be contained by multiple clay, plastic and concrete barriers.” The good news is significant strides are being made from various quarters to address what these brief facts threaten. Just one example in the desert is the giant waste “mountain” called the Lancaster Landfill and Recycling Center. Lancaster is striving to be a “net zero” city with energy saving, green energy production, organized recycling, education and cutting-edge strategies for dealing with garbage. More and more cities across our land are following suit. Meanwhile, the mountain of trash remains the highest land feature in the area. Small House with No Doors - Infrared Exposure - Argus, CA - 2015 | Osceola Refetoff Continuing research and education on buying less, limiting packaging and eliminating food waste can greatly reduce garbage production by individuals and their families. But carelessness, ignorance and greed in our consumer society push back. Next to the issue of “garbology” are destroyed landscapes due to waste products from various military/industrial processes. Often ignorance and budgetary needs are responsible. Slowly, ways to clean the desert areas are being found through human ingenuity. The cleanup is expensive, and many companies have not made proper funding preparations to fix the damage they have caused. Solar plants will need to be torn down or totally rebuilt. These costs need to be built in as construction begins. Many county administrations just see the positives of development and fail to take in the eventual costs of deactivation, reconstruction or dealing with toxic landscapes. Water Tank - Infrared Exposure - Lone Pine, CA - 2013 | Osceola Refetoff One example of the good news is the cleanup of the Whittaker-Bermite Gunpowder Company, a location in the center of Santa Clarita, California. Through the years, this private company developed military armaments as well as fireworks, not realizing until too late the poisoning aspect of dumping perchlorate waste products in the canyons. The pollutant worked its way into the groundwater, ruining the wells in the center of this growing desert city. Scientists developed practical ways of cleaning the soil using anaerobic (non-oxygen dependent) bacteria to break down perchlorate in sealed cells activated by sunlight. Ultimately chlorine gas is left to almost harmlessly dissipate into the air, leaving the soil not in a pristine state, but to a quality commensurate with future intended uses for the land. Lone Tree & Posts - Infrared Exposure - Cinco, CA - 2012 | Osceola Refetoff Studying what we leave behind in our desert areas of California reveal many negative consequences, but life there is not without hope. We see by looking at ruins, memorials, wastelands, garbage, personal artifacts and restored landscapes that what we leave behind while discouraging, also challenges humans to rise to their very best natures and develop solutions for previous destruction. The biggest impediment then is greed, expense and the lack of will to address the challenges in today’s deserts. All of this calls forth individual responsibility. For in the end, it is the single person whether working alone or together in groups that have the final duty of learning from what we leave behind and acting accordingly. The California desert remains at the forefront of the ecological challenges that face our country and the world. With the de-watering of California’s Salton Sea, we confront an immense dying ecosystem that threatens the health and livelihood of the Los Angeles area and beyond. While a roadmap for its rehabilitation has yet to come into focus, sites like Whittaker-Bermite and Owens Lake offer a glimmer of hope and suggest a path towards redressing the mistakes of past. The land, we are told, is on loan to us by our grandchildren. Today, we are creating its future for generations to come. Our children’s children will read of our success or failure in the traces we leave behind in the sand.

On May 12th from 4pm to 6pm writer/historian Christopher Langley and photographer Osceola Refetoff will be having an opening reception at MOAH (Lancaster Museum of Art and History) for their exhibition “High & Dry: Land Artifacts.” This is part of a long-term collaboration between Langley and Refetoff who have been collaborating on High & Dry since 2013 and their work regularly appears on KCET’s Emmy-winning Artbound. Their partnership has birthed a book and this exhibit using Langley’s historically influenced writing contextualizing Refetoff’s dramatical infrared black and white images. Their collaborative efforts offer both historical and personal perspective. Refetoff put it this way, “From the beginning of human time we have been leaving things in the desert. Those things, when you look at them, tells you about the people who lived there before.” The idea of documenting human activities through these remaining artifacts to what appears to be pristine environment is telling. These remains littering these arid lands speaks volumes of people hopes, aspirations, losses and failures. It is the natural extension of the human spirit and mind to speculate and to wonder why it happened or what went wrong? These artifacts captured in Refetoff’s black and white images are the ghost and bones of human habitation: of failed lifestyle experiments or doomed enterprises. Langley and Refetoff attempt to offer written resolutions to these remains and photographic evidence we all can relate to in this exhibition of High & Dry. One of the goals of “High & Dry: Land Artifacts” is to raise awareness about what we leave behind in the desert and the kind of legacy we want to leave to future generations. Energy harvesting has been wholeheartedly embraced in the Mojave Desert, but what will become of these turbines and solar farms? What is the environmental impact of leaving these things behind? Langley and Refetoff are hopeful that their work will be part of a meaningful dialog on how and where wind turbines and solar arrays will be used in a sustainably responsible way, saving the desert environment, and not to have them become abandoned relics as part of lingering detritus littering the desert floor. In my discussion with Refetoff, I discovered he has a cinematic background graduating from NYU and in keeping with that theme he referenced 3 important influences on his photographic work. In regards to visual arts and composition in black and white, he looks to Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and Jean-Pierre Melville composition and content. In each of his photos, Refetoff wants to conjure up an idea or is some way to tell a story. These black and white images of his set on a matte finish, which are rich and painterly to the eye. These images are both impressions and documents, imagination and the tangible remains of human visitations and moving arid vistas. Langley has been an educator for the majority of his life. He has lived in and studied the Mojave Desert for over 45 years. His work as a film historian, founder of the Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine, and Inyo County Film Commissioner focuses on the desert’s complex relationship with cinema, and how land plays a primary role in the story of our lives. Langley’s environmental advocacy has won the National Conservation Cooperation Award. His writing is widely syndicated. He has written three books on California’s arid landscapes. Langley and Refetoff mutual interest in cinema make for a nice pairing with an eye to making the most of both words and images. Both see themselves collaborating in a similar manner like other 20th century partnerships of writers and photographers: referencing, Walker Evans with James Agee and Dorothea Lange with Paul Taylor, who was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Roosevelt administration. “High & Dry: Land Artifacts” will be the first art exhibit to incorporate elements from MOAH’s permanent collection of historical artifacts. Langley and Refetoff encourage visitors to bring a single item, something non-toxic, that they would like to leave behind for future generations in a time capsule to be created in part of this exhibit. “High & Dry: Land Artifacts” books and photographs will be available to peruse and purchase. Top Image: Infrared Exposure – First printed: 2018

Land Artifacts – Solo Show – Museum of Art & History (MOAH) – Lancaster, CA – 2018 Exhibition: “Hight & Dry: Land Artifacts” May 12 – July 15, 2018 Opening Reception: May 12th 4-6pm Artists Talk Sunday, June 3 1pm Address: Lancaster Museum of Art (MOAH) 665 W. Lancaster Blvd, Lancaster. MOAH is about an hour away from DTLA for those interested in an adventure and an experience. Infrared Exposure – First printed: 2018

Land Artifacts – Solo Show – Museum of Art & History (MOAH) – Lancaster, CA – 2018
Open Desert – Palm Springs Art Museum – 2016 Infrared Exposure – First printed: 2018 Agriculture is no longer a significant enterprise in the Owens Valley. Most of the region’s farms failed after the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. High & Dry covers the story for KCET’s Artbound here:
www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/the-silos-of-inyo-county-tombstones-of-the-ghost-farms

Land Artifacts – Solo Show – Museum of Art & History (MOAH) – Lancaster, CA – 2018 Infrared Exposure – First printed: 2014
 Scapes – Solo Exhibit Curated by Hayley Marie Colston – Unita – El Segundo, CA – 2018 Pinholes & Infrareds – Chungking Studio – Los Angeles, CA – 2016 Haunted Landscapes – Art Share LA – 2015 Infrared Exposure – First printed: 2018

Land Artifacts – Solo Show – Museum of Art & History (MOAH) – Lancaster, CA – 2018 Infrared Exposure – First printed: 2018

Land Artifacts – Solo Show – Museum of Art & History (MOAH) – Lancaster, CA – 2018 Infrared Exposure – First printed: 2018

Land Artifacts – Solo Show – Museum of Art & History (MOAH) – Lancaster, CA – 2018
 Open Desert – Palm Springs Art Museum – 2016 Largest single source of particulate pollution in the United States. Infrared Exposure