News Release

Black Rock Art Gallery Opening of Land Escape Exhibition

You are viewing ARCHIVED content

This content was published online before January 20, 2025. Please note that this content is NOT UPDATED, and links may not work. For current information, visit https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/news/index.htm.

News Release Date: July 6, 2022
Contact: Alison Shoup

Joshua Tree National Park management is pleased to announce a new art exhibition by former Mojave National Preserve Artist in Residence, Natalie Larsen. Land Escape is a series of works on paper about her 2019 residency. Through intricate and layered drawings, Larsen creates a rich depiction of the Mojave Desert.

As the descendent of Mormon pioneers, Larsen has struggled with the complex history present in the desert landscape and her inheritance of its legacy; however, she says, “when I spend time in the desert, I feel at peace.” A Pittsburg native, she still finds herself creating work about the desert and her family’s ties to its settlement.

She was an artist-in-residence prior to the 2020 fires, and this body of work is a memorial to the Mojave as it was in 2019. Spending significant time in the Cima Dome area, so many of her drawings are of places that are very different now. “It was important to me to work from a place of remembrance for what I saw in 2019… There is a genre in art called ‘Memento Mori,’ paintings and drawings that reflect on mortality… For me, these drawings serve as Momento Mori for the Mojave.”

The exhibition will run from July 10, 2022, until August 27, 2022, at the Black Rock Art Gallery in the Black Rock Nature Center. Located at 9800 Black Rock Canyon Rd, Yucca Valley, CA 92284, the building is open weekend hours only, Friday–Monday, 8 am–4 pm. 

RSS Feed | What is RSS?