Located at the northern edge of Joshua Tree National Park in southern California, DE/TOUR JOSHUA TREE is the home and studios of Douglas Blanc and Jillian Sandell. We gratefully acknowledge that we are guests living on unceded Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, and Maarrênga’yam land.

 

After visiting the area several times on road trips, in Fall 2016 we moved with Jolie our poodle to the desert for what we thought would be a year sabbatical. Two months later, we realized this was where we wanted to co-create the next chapter of our lives. We left the Bay Area – where we had lived for more than two decades – and made Joshua Tree our new home: the detour became the destination, the tourists became the residents.

 

We each have a studio on our property, and also occasionally host visiting artists in our small guest cottage. Across our different mediums and styles, we have each found the desert to be a source of inspiration in our art – directly from co-existing in close proximity with desert plants and animals, which are often the subject of our work, and indirectly, in the time and space we now have for our art practice.