My New Blog

I think this will be a very interesting and fun class, maybe I will see you there!

Saturday, February 27th
Living Traditions Class : Cahuilla Pottery
The skill of pottery making was important to the Cahuilla people and to other Native Americans. Tony Soares (Choctaw/Seminole descendant) will teach basic techniques used to create pots for storing water and food. He will also share his knowledge of clay deposits, clay processing, and firing. Class fee includes materials.
Fee: $25- Free to Museum members. 10:30 am - 5:00 P.M. at the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, 219 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs

A Home Is Like A Tomato

(Pepperdine University, Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu) Agnes Pelton's remarkable career is sensitively and eloquently chronicled in the survey of fifty paintings that range between spiritual abstractions and glowing landscapes. A pioneer in abstraction and one of the founding members of the Transcendental Painting Group, Pelton was long a neglected figure in art history until Michael Zakian, now Director at the Weisman Museum, researched and curated this amazing retrospective.
A quiet, contemplative woman who was the granddaughter of the famous abolitionist Theodore Tilton, Pelton believed deeply in the intrinsic poetry of natural phenomena. After a childhood filled with music, art and constant travel, she lived in New York City and was invited to exhibit two of her Imaginative paintings, symbolist works that were influenced by Arthur Davies, in the famous Armory Show of 1913.

After a stint in New Mexico in 1919 with Mabel Dodge Sterne, who also introduced Georgia O' Keeffe to the Southwest, Pelton moved into the Hayground windmill at Water Mill, Long Island in 1921. Here she painted richly colored, penetrating portraits of prominent New Yorkers, and in 1926 first started painting her intensely personal organic abstractions. Abstract qualities had always permeated her earlier works such as the fluidly and loosely painted allegory West Wind (1915) and the shimmering veils of color in Room Decoration in Purple and Gray (1917).

At the core of all her work was a philosophical immersion in the works of the Romantic poets Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth, who all explored the Spiritual in nature in their poems. With nature as a constant, Pelton transformed the poets' words into radiant imagery as in Being (1926), where the elliptical whirl of light and color coalesce to create the essence of life. In The Fountain shimmering orbs of yellow and mauve are united with translucent veils of water. Elemental natural phenomena always acted as a catalyst to Pelton as in her mysterious and beautiful painting of fiery lava, Firepit of Kilauea Volcano (1924).

Stunning abstractions such as Illumination (1930) and Star Gazer (1929) represent the apex of her refined visual poetry. While abstract, Pelton continued to reference nature. The North Star and jagged blades of ice appear in Illumination and twilight melts into the radiant hills in tin Star Gazer. In 1931, Pelton moved to Cathedral City in Palm Springs and spent the next thirty years paing her opalescent, glowing abstractions and vibrant, rich desert landscapes. Her natural repertoire of stars, clouds, waves, flowers, earth, water and fire became her poetic leitmotifs, and reemerged in such luminescent paintings as Siren Song (1934), where a golden, translucent vessel emerges from stylized, rhythmic waves.

While in the desert, Pelton also captured the startling beauty of the barren landscape. Among these works the lush Seeds of Date (1936) and the shimmering Smoke Tree series are her best. In Pelton's last unfinished painting, Light Center (1960-61), she represents a giant orb of blue white light that radiates with spiritual energy and intensity, a continuum in all of her work.
Pelton was a fascinating artist whose work adeptly bridged the span between vibrant realism and spiritual abstraction.

The consensus economic outlook is for a gradual recovery with low inflation, and the economic data released during the week was consistent with this view. Economic growth during the third quarter of the year was revised lower, but both the Fed and private economists raised their forecasts for future growth. This week's economic reports indicated that some sectors of the economy are improving, such as the housing market (see below), while others reflected weakness. Wednesday's data on Core Personal Consumption Expenditures prices continued to show little inflationary pressure, which allows the Fed to keep rates low to assist the economic recovery.

This week's home sales data for the nation far exceeded expectations across the board. October Existing Home Sales jumped 10% from September. Inventories of unsold existing homes dropped to a 7.0-month supply, the lowest level since February 2007. October New Home Sales rose 6%, and inventories of new homes declined to the lowest level in decades. Extremely low mortgage rates, high affordability levels, and the first-time homebuyer tax credit boosted sales in October.

Also Notable:

• The October Core PCE inflation index, (Personal Consumption Expenditures), rose at a slim 1.4% annual rate
• Weekly Jobless Claims fell to the lowest level since September 2008
• The Fed raised its forecast for economic growth in 2009 and 2010
• Gold prices rose to a record high, approaching $1,200 per ounce

Press Release

By Debra Gruszecki August 14, 2009

Home sales activity has surged 33 percent through June, with 4,615 valleywide sales — 2,598 happening in the second quarter of the year.

The gain has been sustained since 2007.

And Cathedral City is among the cities posting positive real estate sales gains.

“The measurement of active buyers in the marketplace, and deals getting made, is showing a dramatic increase,'' said Bob Thomas, head field consultant for Real Data Strategies, the Brea-based firm that provides quarterly data to the Cathedral City Sun for an assessment on housing sales.

Activity is up roughly 30 percent over a year ago, Thomas said, with Cathedral City posting year-over-year gains of 47.6 percent with 251 sales in the second-quarter.

Through June, sales were up 62 percent.

Price is driving sales.

Average home sale prices in Cathedral City have fallen 32 percent — $80,057 — from last year, and now hover largely around the $167,485 mark. That's led investors and first-time buyers armed with tax incentives into a frothy new frontier — the affordable housing market.

“This market is healing itself from the bottom,'' said Greg Berkemer, executive director of the California Desert Association of Realtors. “It collapsed from the bottom, and it's healing itself that way.”

Thomas said, “The market is very different today.”

According to Fred Bell, executive officer of the Building Industry Association Desert Chapter, “We called the bottom three to four months ago. I think we're there.”

The analysis of homes sold through the Desert Area Multiple Listing Service showed:

Spots that saw devastation from foreclosure activity two to three years ago now are posting the strongest sales volume gains by dollar and number.

The buying spurt has shaved average sale prices on middle-priced and luxury homes.

Valleywide, the average stood at $257,427 in the second-quarter of 2009. One year ago, it was $454,706. Two years ago, it was $518,964. That's a 43 percent drop on a one-year basis and 50 percent on a two-year basis.

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Cities with luxury homes, once insulated from the free-fall in price, are now experiencing slow downs and price declines due, in part, to the national capital crisis that put a chill on Jumbo loan availability.

The pinch is revealing itself in total sales volume reports.

Valleywide data from Real Data Strategies show that the $1.2 billion logged in Multiple Listing Service home sales from January to June has dropped 27 percent over the same period in 2008, down from $1.6 billion in 2008.

Total sales over the same period in 2007 was $2 billion and change.

But the strong, affordable market in Cathedral City pushed total volume sales up 2.9 percent. The total volume of sales on Desert Area Multiple Listing Service homes in Cathedral City rose from $78.5 million from January to June 2008 to $80.8 million over the same period this year.

No pain, no gain

But real estate experts and economists have cautioned against relying on this data to paint unrealistic expectations.

“We know there's more pain to be endured,” Berkemer said, as another wave of foreclosures is set to hit. “If the pace continues at these rates” and the valley absorbs sales as fast as they're coming into the marketplace, “the long-term outlook is positive.”

Bell doesn't see significant improvement until mid-2010.

“We still have a lot of foreclosure activity heading our way to keep the prices down,'' he said. “That's not going to change. We need to realize it.”

Bell said some economists have predicted another 16 to 18 months of foreclosure activity as houses sold with high-interest, mortgage-resets work through the system.

“It means we'll be bouncing along the bottom for a while, but indicators are we'll see the market start to rebound in 2012 and the early part of 2013.”

Cities with luxury homes, once insulated from the free-fall in price, are now experiencing slow downs and price declines due, in part, to the national capital crisis that put a chill on Jumbo loan availability.

The pinch is revealing itself in total sales volume reports.

Valleywide data from Real Data Strategies show that the $1.2 billion logged in Multiple Listing Service home sales from January to June has dropped 27 percent over the same period in 2008, down from $1.6 billion in 2008.

Total sales over the same period in 2007 was $2 billion and change.

But the strong, affordable market in Cathedral City pushed total volume sales up 2.9 percent. The total volume of sales on Desert Area Multiple Listing Service homes in Cathedral City rose from $78.5 million from January to June 2008 to $80.8 million over the same period this year.

No pain, no gain

But real estate experts and economists have cautioned against relying on this data to paint unrealistic expectations.

“We know there's more pain to be endured,” Berkemer said, as another wave of foreclosures is set to hit. “If the pace continues at these rates” and the valley absorbs sales as fast as they're coming into the marketplace, “the long-term outlook is positive.”

Bell doesn't see significant improvement until mid-2010.

“We still have a lot of foreclosure activity heading our way to keep the prices down,'' he said. “That's not going to change. We need to realize it.”

Bell said some economists have predicted another 16 to 18 months of foreclosure activity as houses sold with high-interest, mortgage-resets work through the system.