Barbara Gothard, Ph.D.

Title: I’m A Contradiction

From modest Illinois roots, Gothard aspires to utilize her creative potential in a contemporary art form that is associated with the unconscious mind.  She lives, works and is influenced by her ever-changing desert environment, a soft malleable and metamorphic dwelling space surrounded by majestic mountains awash in brilliant colors.  Gothard produces an extensive body of symbolically autobiographical artworks which are exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. During recent BoxoPROJECTS Artist Residency her latest project, Contradictions-Moving the Past Forward©, was awarded grants from California Arts Council and California Humanities.  Gothard, an art magazine Writer/Contributor, is an Emeritus Member of the Artists Council and serves on the Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency Advisory Board.

Pat Kearns

Title: Walking In The Desert By Moonlight 

Pat Kearns is a singer songwriter, recording engineer, and radio personality from Portland, Oregon.  He relocated to Landers, California, in 2017, planning to open a destination recording studio. Kearns' 2019 album, Down In The Wash, was recorded and mixed in his tiny, off grid cabin which rests on five scenic acres where the future studio would be located.  Goat Mountain Recording, a solar powered world class recording studio, opened in November of 2020.  Kearns works with musicians from around the world and performs internationally.  He has hosted the Z107.7 Local Music Showcase since February, 2020.

Chakra Kahn

Title: Creosote Tea

Chakra is a San Diego Native, married mother of 3 wildlings, and a happy high desert transplant of the past 4 years.  She's a real witch, and ghost wrangler and will offer to read your tarot cards as quickly as she'll offer you a glass of water on a hot dry desert day.  Believing most of life's tough questions can be found by looking within, and that plants are a tool to help us access those hard to reach areas.  She teaches Spirit Plant Yoga at Untamed Yoga. If you see her say, "Hi!", but be warned she's a hugger.

Joshua Kjerstad

Title: To Catch A Green Mojave

Josh is the singer/songwriter of the Clouds, a band he started less than a year after moving to Joshua Tree in March of 2006. He recently participated in the Open Studio Tours, showing several of his etched and carved art glass pieces. He was an "artist by day and an artist by night," for over a decade; a '9 to 5' artist while playing lead and rhythm guitar in several bands while coming in late to work for over ten years."I dropped out of high school, and went on to drop out of college.

Websites: soundcloud.com/joshua-in-joshua-tree
Instagram: @wine_and_myrrh

Lisa Lynn Morgan

Tilte: A Dry Oasis 

Lisa Lynn Morgan is a local singer/songwriter who has been nominated in multiple categories for several years running in the Coachella Valley Music Awards. She has performed and hosted Open Mic often at Pappy and Harriet’s. She has sung with Paul Rogers, Mickey Thomas, Terry Reid, Great White New Christie Minstrels, and Travis Meadows, and performed in bands with residencies in Las Vegas. She is also the Publisher and Co-Owner of Joshua Tree Voice, a monthly publication dedicated to the arts, culture, and ecology of the Morongo Basin.

Renee Asher Pickup

Title: Shifting Sands

Renee Asher Pickup is a Marine Corps vet and mellowed out punk living in Southern California. Renee writes fiction about bad things happening to flawed people, nonfiction that is critical of the status quo, and truly believes From Dusk Till Dawn changed her life. Her novel with Andrez Bergen: Black Sails, Disco Inferno is available now from Open Books.

Miguel Rivera

Title: The Beauty of Silence

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Miguel Rivera is a Musician, Mentor, Translator, Teacher.  He has lived his life  on the road as a touring musician, cab driver on the streets of LA, Supervising Sound Editor for Film and TV,  mentor and retreat leader for at risk youth, veterans, first responders and civilians, and poetry translator. He has 4 bilingual anthologies of the Maya K’iche’ poet Humberto Ak’abal published: “Poems I brought down from the mountain” U.S. 2001, “Tejiendo las huellas” Uruguay 2006, “El animalero” Guatemala 2008, “In the courtyard of the moon” Tia Chucha Press, U.S. 2021.

Gabriel Hart

Title: A Loss of Containment

Gabriel Hart lives in Morongo Valley in California’s High Desert. He's the author of the literary-pulp collection Fallout From Our Asphalt Hell, the Palm Springs noir novelette A Return To Spring, and his new poetry book Hymns From the Whipping Post, published by Close to the Bone (U.K.). His story "The Maid and the Maidens" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. He's a regular contributor to Lit Reactor, Los Angeles Review of Books, and is a co-conspirator at arts/culture site The Last Estate. 

Nell St. John

Title: Van Life On Mars

Nell St. John is an actress, filmmaker, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and internationally published author originally from Portland, Oregon who has lived in the desert Southwest for over two decades. 

Seth Zaharias

Title: From Our Land to Our Land
 

Seth was raised in California, Indiana, Montana, and Tennessee and has lived in Joshua Tree since 1999, founding the "Sethspool" in 2002. Joshua Tree is his home, his passion, his community, and his economic backbone. Seth's first job in JT was cleaning the showers at Coyote Corner and his second job was washing dishes at Crossroads Cafe and now for the last 11 years Seth and his wife Sabra are the proud proprietors of Cliffhanger Guides. Though Seth's primary professional passion is sharing JTNP with folks he has also been a leader in Joshua Tree environmental, cultural, community-centric grass routes causes and projects for over 20 years.