Happy New Year from Joshua Tree!  Here at HDTS we're looking forward to a new year of programming (mark your calendars for the sixth edition of Amy and Wendy Yao’s Art Swap Meet on February 25, 2012) and changes of all kinds.

While some of these changes are welcome (check out our new signs!), others are less so, including the proposals to build an Indian casino and a Dollar General just east of downtown Joshua Tree.  Follow Joshua Tree Barnstormer and Defend Joshua Tree for updates and to learn what you can do to stay informed and help thwart these proposed developments.

As we begin the new year, we’d like to extend a huge thanks to all our artists, supporters, volunteers, and friends for a great 2011—we are so very grateful for your support and involvement!  HDTS operates on a really small staff and a shoestring budget, so we absolutely depend on volunteers and supporters to keep our doors open and help us bring in exciting new programming.

Please consider supporting HDTS if you’d like to continue to see us up and running—contact us today to make a donation or volunteer.  (Volunteers get special perks, including discounts at the HDTS Life Enhancement Shop and overnight camping or Wagon Station accommodations at A-Z West!)

Happy 2012 and hope to see you soon!

Danielle McCullough and Gabie Strong, Blast Site: A Monument to Future Failures, 2011. Cyanotype fabric, painted leather, slipcrete, silver, ash, paint, pallets, wood, 16mm film with pen and ink, 16mm projector. Photo by Gabie Strong.

Artists Danielle McCullough and Gabie Strong will lead a sun-print cyanotype process workshop using 19^th century photographic techniques and contemporary materials gathered from the desert floor to produce images of white on a sea of bright blue. Blast Site is a monument to future failures, marking survival in the high desert, invoking both the ancient and the new. The workshop includes a post-apocalyptic narrative hike through Blast Site—through the urban, rural and mythic areas of the high desert—followed by a cyanotype process printing demonstration using sunlight and detritus. Workshop attendees will learn how to create beautiful, blue-print like photographs to commemorate their travels through Blast Site. The workshop demonstration will be followed by a barbecued vegetarian lunch including native vegetation.

Gabie and Danielle have designed and printed an exclusive, hand-made limited-edition artist book and CD soundtrack for workshop attendees. Titled Blast Site: A Field Guide to Excavating Our Future Failures, this book presents high desert field research including essays on the military-industrial complex, indigenous mythology of the region, poetry, survival cooking recipes, maps and ephemera.