Just outside Joshua Tree, this art fair set in a desert motel is building something you can't get in L.A.
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Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh is headlining a much-anticipated Saturday night event in Pioneertown.But this isn’t a music festival.
It’s an art fair.Now in its fifth year, the High Desert Art Fair transforms the rooms of the historic Pioneertown Motel into exhibition spaces for 20 galleries and publishers, while expanding into a broader mix of programming — something akin to a mini Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.This year’s edition includes an opening night party with a DJ set by street artist Shepard Fairey, panel discussions, guided meditation and even a sound bath.Mothersbaugh’s performance, just weeks before Devo is set to play at the actual Coachella, captures the weekend’s experimental tone: When he takes the stage at the iconic honky-tonk roadhouse Pappy & Harriet’s, he won’t be joined by his band.
Instead, he’ll perform with “The General,” described as “part instrument, part sculpture.”The event reflects the ambitions of its founders — veteran Los Angeles art dealer Nicholas Fahey and artist manager Candice Lawler — who launched the fair in 2019, hoping to cement the high desert’s growing status as a cultural destination.Fahey’s vision is unapologetically big: He wants the region to become the “Marfa or the Hamptons of L.A.” — wealthy enclaves where art and tourism converge.Long term, the pair hope the fair will expand beyond visual art to include film and other media, becoming a permanent fixture on the desert arts calendar alongside events like Modernism Week and Desert X.The fair’s growth has surprised even its organizers.
What began with roughly 50 people gathered in Lawler’s living room is expected to draw between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors per day this year.“I thought we’d be this size five years [from now],” Lawler said during a recent interview at Fahey/Klein Gallery, the La Brea Avenue space Fahe...