Mar 24, 2020
Artist
and founder of Earth House Studios, Sharon
Davis creates colorful art and installations at her home in Morongo
Valley.
Sharon
and I bonded as two Jersey girls, so you might get hungry listening
to the beginning of this
episode.
Sharon
left NJ for the first time in in 1974 and came to California,
landing in Huntington Beach, moving on to Moreno Valley, then Palm
Springs. After that she's moved between the east coast and Texas,
Virginia and Maryland, with a few stops back to California in
between.
Her
first desert experience was in Palm Springs, which Sharon found to
be way too hot. When she did decide to come back west, having some
pretty specifics requirements for her property, she thought she'd
land in Pioneertown, but found the perfect place in Morongo
Valley - a place she feels doesn't get enough credit and notice in
the basin.
Sharon
has always liked art and being creative, dabbling in many different
types of art from drawing to sewing. As a kid, a woman came to her
parents house to buy a couch, saw some of Sharon's art and invited
her to come apprentice with her husband, who worked for Tiffany's.
Sharon spent one Saturday with the man and another young artist,
learning how to inlay enamel with toothpicks.
After
have her kids, Sharon set aside her creativity and art, only using
it to work on projects she typically gave away as Christmas
gifts.
She
finds herself very inspired by the desert and the night sky and
tells a story about her high school art teacher, with whom she
re-connected with many years later. We also hear a bit of history around the Morongo
Valley Art Colony.
Being
part Cherokee, Sharon tells us a bit about ceremony, sweat lodges
and a recent art installation event she hosted at her home to bring
awareness to the disappearances of over 6,000 missing native
American females – women and children.