Pieces in Mecca & Indio

After the Salton Sea installations we headed to the desert. Our next stop was in Mecca, not too far from the previous one, but it took us some time to find the right way. In fact, one of the things we learned is that it's good to plan in advance and figure out exactly how toileting get to the pieces, because the Google Maps map on the site was not too accurate when giving directions.

"A Point of View", a sculpture by artist Iván Argote, consisted of several blocks of stairs with no destination and inscriptions in both English and Spanish. I was not impressed by the messages themselves, but I did enjoy the effect of the structures as they stood there in the middle of nowhere.

Before heading to lunch we made a stop at the Oasis Date Gardens. It's a dates farm with a big selection of dates and a small and quirky store with date products. It also has a little coffee shop where we had a delicious shake that was too big even when we split it between the three of us.

We had lunch in Indio at a place called Heirloom Craft Kitchen. I had a delicious flatbread but there were a lot of options that sounded good, including some vegetarian ones.

We stopped quickly in Coachella to check out one of the pieces by Cinthia Marcelle, called Wormhole. She set TV monitors in empty store windows, showing the facade of another shop. The idea was good, but we didn't love it and we didn't spend much time there either.

Next we visited a piece called "Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark" by Gary Simmons. Its was an installation as well as a platform for music performances inspired by Lee "Scratch" Perry's Jamaican studio, Black Ark.

It consisted of a series of speakers hand-built from vintage parts and wood scavenged from post-Katrina New Orleans and a screen with video documentation of the musicians’ performances.

One of the coolest things about Desert X is how it takes you to places to see the artworks, but in the process you discover fascinating locations. This building, at 43143 Jackson St. in Indio was the California National Guard. Google tells me it hosts the organizations Veterans of Foreign Wars and Army Cadets of Indio. I have no clue what goes on there these days, but when we visited it we found a big, mostly empty space full of covered in motivational words.

The next piece we saw was "Visit us in the shape of clouds" by Armando Lerma, one of my favorites at Desert X. It was a mural that featured various images from the American Southwest and beyond such as snakes, birds, parrots, fish, monkeys, seashells, plants, flowers, and rock art. "He selected these images to illustrate a story of migration and the transitory," says the website.

It was painted on a deposit and I took a couple of pictures getting my hands through the fence. I loved the setup and the magic of seeing such a beautiful artwork in such an inaccessible place.Read more