Search Results

Today we’re looking closely at a granite mano and schist metate, used by Native Americans in the Antelope Valley for processing plant remains such as Piñon Pine nuts. Groundstone tools are used for processing plants and have become common cultural remains from 8,000 and 6,000 BCE. This shift in material culture indicates an increased dependence on plants as food sources. Though the Native Americans local to the Antelope Valley did not engage in agricultural practices, they utilized a variety of naturally abundant plant resources in the area as a means of subsistence. Groundstone tools are usually made of basalt, granite, rhyolite, or other cryptocrystalline and igneous stones whose coarse and dense structure makes them ideal for grinding organic materials. Metamorphic rocks, such as schist and gneiss, are also commonly used to make groundstone tools. The most common types of these tools are classified as mano, metate, mortar, and pestle. A mano, which is the Spanish word for ‘hand’, is a handheld grinding stone used in accordance with a metate. A mano is held in one or two hands and moved back and forth or in a slightly circular motion along a horizontal plane of the larger stone slab. Over time, the surface of the mano becomes worn down and smooth. A metate is a large, flat stone slab used as the platform for processing plant remains. Over time and through continued use, a depression forms in the center from the horizontal friction caused by a mano. "Antelope Valley Indian Museum, Antelope Valley Indian Peoples, AVIM.parks.ca.gov Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

Before the 14 Freeway that we know today, Beale’s Cut (also known as Fremont Pass or Newhall Pass) was one of the primary ways to enter the Antelope Valley through the Newhall area. The cut dates to the 1860s, serving as one of the oldest pathways into the Antelope Valley. Clarence Gerblick is pictured here, passing through the famous narrow trail c. 1910. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections

The Southern Pacific Railroad brought some of the earliest settlers to the Lancaster area, with many of the earliest Lancaster residents being male railroad employees. This photo, c. 1902, shows railroad employee Leslie Wright operating a three-wheeled hand-powered handcar. Behind him is the expanded Lancaster Train Depot. The first official depot was built in 1885 and later underwent expansion. Before this, the train depot was a “shack” depot operating out of a tent. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections

October is California Archaeology Month, and to celebrate, we’re showcasing some of our favorite artifacts! Today, we’re looking at an obsidian knife with ties to Coastal Chumash Culture. The Antelope Valley served as a primary trade route for the tribes of California, providing a natural corridor through the mountains and connecting the California coast with trails to Mexico, Northern and Central California, and the Southwest culture region. This ideal placement greatly benefited local inhabitants, providing them with an abundance of desert, mountain, and coastal resources. This trade network also allowed local groups to establish strong relationships with each other as well as more distant tribes. For example, it is known that groups in the Antelope Valley, such as the Vanyume and Tataviam, had direct contact with members of the Chumash culture. This obsidian knife offers insight into the role of these trade networks since materials used to craft it were not directly available within the Antelope Valley. The blade itself is fashioned out of obsidian, commonly referred to as “volcanic glass” because of its extremely fine-grained texture and ability to fracture conchoidally. The obsidian was obtained from an inland source, likely the Mono Lake region, whereas the other materials were obtained from along the coast. The handle is wooden, adorned with Olivella biplicata shell disc beads. The hafting and adhesive material used was asphaltum, a naturally produced tar-like material that washes ashore from undersea oil seepages. When heated, asphaltam becomes a spreadable glue-like consistency, cooling to form a hard, waterproof seal. Olivella shell beads were used as a form of currency by several California tribes; the use of it as adornment on this knife indicates the possibility of the item belonging to a high-status individual or being used in ritualistic contexts. You can continue to celebrate California Archaeology Month by visiting the Antelope Valley Indian Museum, open on weekends, and visiting the Archaeology section of the “Celebrate Lancaster” exhibition opening at MOAH:Cedar on October 21! "Antelope Valley Indian Museum, Antelope Valley Indian Peoples, AVIM.parks.ca.gov Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

This photo shows the backyard of the Western Hotel, c. 1914. “Tent cities” similar to this one were established to accommodate large crews that came through Lancaster working on various infrastructure projects, such as the construction of the aqueduct. Proprietors of the hotel can be seen with Myrtie Webber second from left, and George Webber in the center, leaning against a tree. Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections

In light of yesterday being Los Angeles County’s first celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day, we are honoring the native peoples of the Antelope Valley with today’s post. The Antelope Valley has been home to Native Americans since the first Paleoindian people arrived during the terminal Pleistocene, up to 12,000 years ago. The early inhabitants of the Antelope Valley were made up of six primary Native American nations. Each nation spoke a variant of two primary language groups: Numic and Takic, both branches of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Kitanemuk centered in the Western portion of the Antelope Valley; the Tataviam, meaning “people who sun themselves,” lived adjacent to the Santa Clarita River and the southern edge of the Antelope Valley; the Serrano, who called themselves takhtam or “people,” lived in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains; the Vanyume (also called Beñemé), sometimes considered a branch of the Serrano, lived north of the San Gabriel Mountains, into the valley and along the Mojave River basin. These groups spoke a variant of Takic language. The Kawaiisu, who called themselves nuwu, also meaning “people,” lived in present-day Tehachapi, and the Chemehuevi lived in the Eastern Mojave Desert. These groups spoke a variant of Numic language. While the neighboring tribes shared cultural and linguistic traits, each was politically independent with only a village chief for authority. Village chiefs maintained contact with one another to facilitate peaceful relations, engage in communal ceremonies, and to allow collaboration and cooperation between groups when necessary. Tribal populations of these groups were generally between 500 to 1000 individuals, concentrated in semi-sedentary settlements. Permanent settlements used in the winter were established in the foothills and mountains, with groups moving down to the valley floor and dispersing into smaller temporary camps for the warmer months. These villages, both permanent and temporary, were utilized over many generations. One of these continually inhabited villages is at the southeastern edge of the Antelope Valley, near the town of Lake Los Angeles. Here, various cultural elements such as stone tools, beads, ceramics, hearths (prehistoric fire pits), and middens (prehistoric trash pits) have been found in abundance. This projectile point was found just beyond the site boundaries. It is classified as a Cottonwood Triangular projectile point, a common technological adaptation of the Great Basin and Antelope Valley that can be dated to between 900-150 years ago. This type of projectile point would have been used as an arrowhead, targeting small game such as rabbit. It is made out of a material called chalcedony, which is a cryptocrystalline form of silica common in the Antelope Valley region. Due to its fine-grained cryptocrystalline structure, chalcedony is characterized by its ability to fracture conchoidally, making it a highly sought after material for stone tool production "Antelope Valley Indian Museum, Antelope Valley Indian Peoples, AVIM.parks.ca.gov Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

For many of the Antelope Valley Native Americans, such as the Kawaiisu and the Kitanemuk, nuts from the Pinyon Pine tree (Pinus monophylla) were a staple food source. There is cultural evidence to suggest that pinyon pine nut roasting was a common practice for the tribes in the local area, facilitated by the surplus of available Pinyon Pine trees. Today’s item, a winnowing basket, is essential to the processing of this resource. Winnowing baskets can be made by weaving together a variety of trees, grass, and other plant fibers, such as deer grass, willow, juniper, and more. The pine nut harvest typically began in late summer, lasting into fall. It was often considered the last great harvest of the year before the start of winter. Due to the significance of the practice, harvest grounds where pine nuts were gathered were often considered sacred. During harvest, cones were removed from trees using a hook-shaped tool and then gathered. In some instances, fallen pine nuts were collected directly from the forest floor. Once the pine cones had been gathered, processing began by roasting the cones over hot coals to open them up and dispel the seeds. The shell of the pine nut is unusually tough, and to avoid breaking the nut inside, the seeds were roasted further so the shell would easily fall off. To do this, the seeds were placed in a winnowing basket along with hot coals. The basket was constantly stirred by swirling the tray and tossing the contents. This was continued until the seeds had a dark brown, crispy outer shell. After the coals were removed, the seeds were lightly ground with a mano to extract the inner fruit. At this point, the nuts could be eaten but were often returned for a second roasting. They were placed back in the winnowing basket and tossed to fully remove the remains of the outer shell. Then, hot coals were returned to the basket. The roasting process was repeated until the nuts were dry and hard with a dark color. This method ensured proper storage of the nuts for later use as these stored nuts were quite useful during winter when plant resources are scarce. After storage, the final procedure was processing them into a fine powder. For this, stone tools such as mortars/pestles and metates/manos were used for grinding. The flour would then be made into a thick paste by adding water, which could be eaten similarly to oatmeal, combined with vegetables or berries, or cooked into a flatbread. "Antelope Valley Indian Museum, Antelope Valley Indian Peoples, AVIM.parks.ca.gov Photo courtesy of MOAH Collections"

LANCASTER - Home is where the heart is was the focus of Museum of Art and History artist-in-residence Dani Dodge's fourth and final installation Saturday for her "Home is Heritage" series. With typewriter at hand, Dodge welcomed those entering the Western Hotel/Museum to sit down and open up about themselves. "Today what I am doing is a community activation for the Lancaster Museum of Art and History. And it is the fourth (and final) of the community activations that I've done. For this one, people are coming in, they are telling me the story of a relative - it can be somebody in their far past or somebody that they know right now - and then I type that story up, about three sentences. Then it's going into a handmade book that is specially made for this. That book will be on display at MOAH: CEDAR where I have a solo show there," Dodge said. "Each of the events are related to ideas of home. I felt like, for me, when I think about Lancaster and the Antelope Valley, it's one of those beautiful community places where people think they want to leave but then they realize 'this is really home.' I'd known for a while that I was going to get this opportunity and I spent some time in the community beforehand," she said. Dodge's first installation took place at Joe Davies Air Park in Palmdale. There, people would write the name of a place that was not home to them on a paper airplane and shoot it into a horizon she created. "The next one (installation) was at Prime Desert Woodlands. I did a painting on a table and it was a painting of the Earth and the people got to come in and they got to write on it, their own messages to the Earth. "Then the third one was at the library, the Lancaster Library ... and there people came in, they told me their life story. I typed a title for their story on to a file card of the library that had a book on the other side. I typed it and they got to file that into a vintage card catalogue. They had these choices of which genre of literature their story was. It could be comedy, romance, horror, nonfiction, and so they had these choices, and then they also got to take a quote from a book." Asked how she came across the Antelope Valley, Dodge said she came because of the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, which has drawn a lot of talent. "They are doing amazing things, they have amazing art, I've been here one time before when I was a reporter for the Ventura County Star actually. I'd come here to do a story on people who were leaving Ventura County to move up here so that they could have their horses near to them," she said. Dodge said for her fourth installation she opted to use a typewriter because of the nostalgia that comes with t. "I love the sensation of a typewriter, I love the nostalgia ingrained to the story, I love the fact that when you write on a typewriter, you see all of the mistakes - when I'm writing these stories, they are very, very human because you can see where I hesitated, you can see where I am thinking, you can see where I got too far into it, I didn't hear the 'ding' and I wrote the sentence over. And so there's a history created just in the action of using the typewriter that is adding to the history that the person is telling me," Dodge said. Although she describes herself as an introvert, Dodge said she enjoys giving people an opportunity to share their stories, an opportunity to use her art as an outlet for others. "I think that there really is, in our current society - despite the fact that we have all these ways of communicating now - there's much less heart-to-heart communication, there's much less looking at somebody and talking to somebody. And so, my projects tried to bring that back a little bit and they try to say 'I value you and that your value to what I do as an artist is important," she said. Dani Dodge lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work is included in three museum collections and has been shown across the U.S. and internationally. In 2016, Americans for the Arts named Dodge's interactive installation/performance "CONFESS" one of the outstanding public art projects of the previous year. As a newspaper reporter, she was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing congressional corruption in 2006. She was embedded with the Marines during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She left journalism in 2008 to focus on art. To share your opinion on this article or any other article, write a letter to the editor and email it to editor@avpress.com or mail it to Letters to Editor, PO Box 4050, Palmdale CA 93590-4050. clopez@avpress.com

Photo by Kristine Shomaker When people (artists, poets, songwriters, superheroes, prisoners, soldiers, sailors, lovers) think about home, most assume those are happy memories full of nostalgia, yearning, longing, safety, innocence, the smell of cookies, someone’s waiting arms, one’s own bed. But in truth it is often the opposite. Not everyone has a home, physical or permanent. Some never had one, some had a good one or a bad one and left or lost it. Home is sometimes a person or a country or a feeling or an idea and not a house at all. Some people carry theirs with them everywhere. Home is full of loved ones, or full of people who think you’re weird. Home is the only place you can finally be alone. How old were you when you left yours? Did you want to go or did someone make you? Have you been back lately, or at all? Why not? Two cats in the yard. Life used to be so hard. Fly away home. Home is where the heart is. East or west home is best. There’s no place like home. Take me home to the place I belong. You can’t go home again. She’s leaving home. Bye-bye. Photo by Kristine Shomaker Whatever a person’s unique experience of home has been, there’s no escaping the formative power that experience exerts on character and identity. For Dani Dodge, home was always one thing, and now it’s becoming quite another. That happens a lot, too. “When we are young,” she writes, “we want nothing more than to get away from home. As we age, some of us want nothing more than to be home.” Personal Territories at MOAH:CEDAR explores this complex and ever-changing dynamic in a bedroom-sized installation that incorporates video and sculpture sewn by Dodge in vinyl, organza, and mattress skin. A two-channel “home movie” is projected onto and through the suspended, diaphanous bed at its center. The multiple light sources impart a quality of lightness, floating, and flickering, which is at once both familiar and elusive, like dreams are, and like memories too. Indeed the idea that it might be possible to give physical expression and literal form to the vagaries of the subconscious and otherwise hidden animates all of Dodge’s work. And hers is a plausible proposition — that this is what memory looks like: diaphanous, awkward, rough, magical, dark and bright, wafting in waves and layers, with sudden shocks and blurred edges. Saliently, there is a thinly billowing darkness rising up like smoke from the corner behind the bed, acknowledging that not all dreams are sweet. Photo by Dani Dodge Visitors are invited to add to the material soul of the work, as they not only contemplate their own memories of home but contribute them by writing them down and stashing them in one of the many white shoe-boxes under the bed, as a further way of physically representing/embodying/enacting how memory works. The symbolism of the bed, like the easy chair in other pieces, is as a place of domestic repose and contemplation, and both recur as motifs in her work. Her strategy regularly involves using her own story as a launchpad and quickly encouraging the active participation of others — frequently by the solicited addition of personal texts from the audience, as with these memory boxes, and also in the weekly series of related public performance events in conjunction with the exhibition, planned at a few special off-campus locations in Lancaster. The performance artifacts are to be brought back to the museum — building an expanding collective memory of this time and place with the help of the people who call it home. Photo by Kristine Shomaker Photo by Baha Danesh Photo by Dani Dodge Saturday, July 1, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.: Joe Davies Heritage Airpark Horizons Beyond the Homefront: Participants fold paper planes, write where they want to go on them, and toss them into the “horizon.” Saturday, July 8, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.: Prime Desert Woodlands The Earth Is My Home: Participants write and draw on an image of the Earth their thoughts of what the planet means to them. Saturday, July 15, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.: Los Angeles County Library – Lancaster The Setting for my Story Is Home: We all have a story to tell. Participants tell the artist a short story about their home, wherever or whatever it is. The artist creates a title for the story and types it on a vintage library reference card that the participant then files into a library card file. Saturday, July 22, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.: Western Hotel Museum Home as Heritage: Visitors to the museum think about their own heritage. They share the name of a relative who was a foundation of their family and a short story about that person. The artist types the story in no more than three sentences on parchment paper that becomes a “book.” Location: MOAH:CEDAR, 44857 Cedar Ave., Lancaster, CA Exhibition runs through August 5, 2017 Hours: Thursday - Sunday; 2 - 8 p.m. Photo by Dani Dodge Photo by Dani Dodge

Mary E. Nichols Photo IT IS ON THE EDGE OF POSSIBILITIES that designer Charles Hollis Jones finds his greatest inspirations, where he cuts through the clutter, dials down the cacophony, and finds the clarity that guides his thinking. At first, Jones was attracted to the optical properties of glass but found the material too limiting because of its fragility. Then he discovered plastics and decided that acrylic would be his material of choice—a decision that has spawned more than twenty-five lines of furniture, accessories, and architectural elements over the course of some fifty years. Focusing on this underutilized material for furnishings, Jones developed a signature style in acrylic and metal that is recognized for its elegant arrangements of the boldest, most elemental geometric shapes—circles, squares, and triangles—in precise and refined combinations. Through years of research, experimentation, and innovation that resulted in proprietary manufacturing processes, Jones mastered the art of bending, stretching, twisting, joining, and casting acrylic into illusionistic furniture and accessories that function beautifully in both domestic and public spaces. He achieves this by exploiting the optical properties of clear acrylic and by outlining the fluid contours of his transparent constructions in reflective polished nickel, chrome, or brass frames. The effect is magical: as one moves around Jones’s furniture one sees through to the sides and edges, each view representing the contour of the completed design. Examples of this phenomenon are the Waterfall line’s Sling chair and Veronica boudoir chair, in which the thinly stretched acrylic forming the back and seat seems to disappear into the air. The continuous bent acrylic fools the eye into thinking that the chairs are weightless and without substance, subverting the reality of their solidity, tensile strength, and tactility. In fact, it is only through their supporting metal frames that the chairs are “exposed.” Jones amplified this idea in the V line’s W chair and the Waterfall line’s Harlow chair, where the metal support structures are eliminated, making the chairs entirely see-through. In a room setting their physical structure seems to dissolve and they become points of light. View of the living room in Jones’s residence, c. 2004. The sofa with lighted platform base, c. 1968, was designed for TV game show host Monty Hall. On the flanking tables are “Let’s Make a Deal” lamps, c. 1963, and in front of the sofa is a coffee table from Jones’s Post line, 1965, in acrylic and polished nickel over steel. At left are a pair of Tumbling Block lounge chairs, 2000, acrylic and polished nickel; a Ziggurat table, 1984, in acrylic and polished nickel (from a series originally designed for Le Mondrian hotel in Hollywood); and a Ziggurat floor lamp, 1965, in acrylic and polished nickel. Starburst, an oil painting by Elizabeth Keck, 1985, hangs above the sofa. MARY E. NICHOLS PHOTO There is always a sense of enchantment in the interplay of reflection and transparency: one imagines that the designer, like the storybook character in Harold and the Purple Crayon, has drawn the outline of a chair, table, or lamp in space and coaxed it into becoming a thing of weight and volume through pure trickery. But it would be a mistake to dismiss Jones’s designs as mere parlor tricks. The underlying principles on which they are based run deep. At their root, his designs are planted firmly in his youth on the family farm on Popcorn Road in a small town near Bloomington, Indiana, where he was born in 1945. Surrounded by farm equipment and assigned the task of tending the dairy cows, Jones experienced firsthand how form follows function in farm machinery; and he also learned the value of a hard day’s work. His talent for design was revealed at an early age in his Erector Set creations and his precocious pencil sketches of cars (for Jones, automobile design has been a lifelong passion). He recollects that he designed and built his first piece of furniture at the age of fourteen: a plywood cabinet for his father’s office. By the age of sixteen he was designing furniture and domestic goods for Roide Enterprises, a Los Angeles acrylic business that retailed its designs at high-end department stores such as Bullock’s Wilshire in Los Angeles. Patio of Jones’s residence, c. 2004. The Truss dining table from the Post line, c. 1970, in acrylic and chrome is flanked by a pair of Waterfall line benches, 1970, in acrylic. Jones’s dog Shyla sits on a Wisteria chair from the Blade line, designed for Tennessee Williams, 1968, in acrylic with upholstered cushion. The ship sculpture on the table is by Curtis Jeré. MARY E. NICHOLS PHOTO Jones had met Roide on a visit to Los Angeles during a summer vacation in 1961 and soon determined that L.A. was the place to make his mark as a designer. After finishing high school, he left the Indiana farm and set off on his own course, settling in Los Angeles, where he secured a job as a driver and delivery boy for Hudson-Rissman, a well-appointed design and accessories showroom. While learning the design business, he worked his way up through the ranks. His design career was formally launched in 1968 when he was appointed head of the design team at the Hudson-Rissman showroom. He held this position until 1974 and within three years of leaving Hudson-Rissman had established his own showroom in the fashionable Los Angeles design district. From the mid-1970s through early 1980s, several of his furniture designs were represented by the Swedlow Group in a line marketed as the Charles Hollis Jones Signature Collection and Signatures in Acrivue. Throughout his approximately fifty years in practice, Jones’s furnishings have been placed in high-profile residential environments created by some of the leading architects, designers, and interior decorators of the twentieth century, among them Paul László, John Lautner, Arthur Elrod, Stephen Chase, Hal Broderick, and John Elgin Woolf. Living room in the residence of Edward Cole and Chris Wigand, Palm Springs, 2016. The furniture includes pieces from the Waterfall line, namely: a pair of Bear sofas with lighted acrylic bases, 1970; four Double Waterfall Pillow chairs, acrylic and polished brass over steel, 2006; and a coffee table, acrylic, 1983. The area rug is by Edward Fields. TONY PINTO PHOTO When asked later in life about influences, Jones cited his father’s adjunct trade as a restorer of wooden covered bridges in Indiana and his mother’s homespun skills as a quilt maker, and indeed, in distinctive ways, both parents provided creative inspiration for his designs. The sleek, visual forms that feature transparent construction and achieve a bold, graphic effect of silhouette derive, in part, from watching his father work. “I saw so many bridges exposed to the bones of their frames,” Jones recalls. The experience gave him not only an understanding of the underlying structural framework but also an appreciation of the stark beauty and strength revealed in a bridge’s complex uncovered forms. The designs of the Metric lounge chair and ottoman (1965) most overtly exploit this concept of exposed infrastructure, with steel and acrylic meeting at right angles to connect the frame. Jones’s acrylic furniture is all about refined profiles and dynamic sweeping lines that make the pieces appear to float above the ground—in homage to the bridge. The intricate patterns of his mother’s hand-stitched quilts also contributed to Jones’s early aesthetic education and helped shape his design vocabulary. He would later translate this visual information onto drafting paper, conceptualizing and inscribing the geometric outlines that would come to define his work. This is most readily apparent in the bowed arch shape of the Crescent chair (2009)—a translation of the Cathedral Window quilt pattern; in the Tumbling Block chair (2000), the profile of which is inspired by the Log Cabin and Tumbling Block patterns; and in the rocking chair in Jones’s O line (2008), an interpretation of the popular Double Wedding Ring quilt pattern. Jones’s childhood experiences fueled his intellectual curiosity for all things design. His Apple chairs and Tree of Life bed (2000)—both from the Tree line—remind us that the Indiana farm is never far from his drafting board. Apple chair, Tree line, 2010, acrylic and polished nickel over steel. Designed in homage to his father’s work with wood, the Tree line demonstrates Jones’s objective to connect his designs back to nature. The twisted, branchlike elements that stretch up and over the arms and back of the chairs, and the spiraling branches that grow upward and extend beyond the top of the bed to mimic a canopy, evoke a sensation of wild, uncontrollable growth. And the dangling apple is the ultimate design tease, pregnant with symbolism. But for Jones, this design returned him solidly to his roots as the son of Indiana farmers. Although he arrived in Los Angeles some fifty years ago and has made the city his home and the location of a successful career, he will be the first to tell you that his experiences growing up on the family farm still surge through his veins, and that his oft-referred-to “international luxe” style is “as American as apple pie.”

Saturday, May 13, 2017 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm MOAH 665 W Lancaster Blvd, Lancaster Ca 93534 In Town — Los Angeles and environs On view May 13-July 30, 2017 Opening reception Saturday, May 13, 4-6 pm www.catherineruane.com Museum of Art and History (MOAH) 665 W. Lancaster Blvd Lancaster, CA 93534 www.lancastermoah.org After over 1000 hours, artist Catherine Ruane completed an ambitious, large scale drawing for the upcoming exhibition “Made in Mojave” opening at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, Saturday May 13. The drawing focuses on thriving plants found at the edge of the world and tells the story of the relationship between a Joshua Tree blossom and a tiny moth. “Made in Mojave” is the inaugural exhibition for The Mojave Project, a multiyear project exploring the physical, geographical and cultural landscape of the Mojave Desert. Ruane’s work focuses on the intricate complexity of nature as a reflection of our own human experience. She recognizes that overarching constructs, such as time, bind us together. Like the blossom and the moth, we share a space in time. This ambitious large scale work consists of 12 individual round drawings 12” in diameter that surround a large scale 50” drawing. The central drawing features a Joshua Tree which represents “a metaphor for our own survival” as well as the delicate balance of cooperation and time to bring on new life. This theme of cooperation and a natural balance is further reinforced by Ruane who has laid out the 12” roundel drawings around the center like a clock. For this work, she emphasizes time as part of the process. Ruane notes that her drawings were created over 1000 hours in her studio studying and meticulously capturing the details of the blossom and moth. Like her subject of study, she has found simplicity in her process using the basics of drawing coupled with time. Ruane has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe most recently showing at the Startup Art Fair in Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825, Beyond Baroque, and Phantom Gallery. Her work is included in several collections including the University of AZ Art Museum.

Aren’t these shoes amazing works of art? The Movers & Makers exhibit is now at the Museum of Art & History (MOAH) in Lancaster. The show features functional art. I attended the opening night festivities and enjoyed the art and mingling with artists and patrons. Once I headed upstairs to the room housing the Chris Francis: Shoe Versatility exhibit, it was obvious that this was the place for me. Each shoe is beautiful on it’s own, but to experience a whole room full of them was wonderful. The shoes are one of a kind and functional. This is art that makes a big, bold statement when worn. Custom shoes have been made for celebrity rockers including Lita Ford, Mick Mars of Motley Crue and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols. I told Chris that they were beautiful, but I didn’t think I’d be able to walk in them, let alone dance around on a stage wearing such high heels. He tried to assure me that with the platforms and a custom fit shoe, it was much easier than it looks. I can definitely see why performers want these eye catching shoes. Chris’s personal life has taken a lot of twists and turns. He’s traveled the US on freight trains and worked on ships, as a chimney sweep and at carnivals and cabarets. These life experiences have enhanced his vision as an artist. The results are beautiful!