Still Intrigued By The Desert

I just listened to Michael Connelly's detective/crime novel The Overlook and now during every biking trip through the desert I see clues: discarded shoes, a stained cushion, broken glass, a silver spoon--someone's discards or evidence of a heinous crime (or my overactive imagination?).

Thinking about all this discarded waste (or evidence) has brought another appreciation for Ed Ruscha's recent artwork: "Psych Spaghetti Westerns" being shown at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. His recent paintings concentrate on the roadside trash....in the desert. Apparently he has a second home out in the Mojave Desert: a place so quiet, his mother once told him: "You can hear your hair grow out here." But he loves it. Ruscha disdains computers and mobile phones, he doesn't watch television and has never, to his knowledge, entered a Starbucks. "I cherish the idea of being alone," he says.