Artist’s Corner Editors Note: Michael Gordon was an Artist-In-Residence in 2011. His exhibit was entitled “The Joshua Tree” By: Michael Gordon For more than a quarter of a century I have passionately explored, hiked, and photographed every corner of California’s deserts with a distinct emphasis on the Mojave. With consistently higher elevations and greater average annual rainfall, the Mojave Desert is a botanically rich and diverse desert which provides ideal habitat for numerous species of cacti, flowering shrubs, wildflowers, the iconic Joshua tree, and much more. It also provides ideal habitat for this photographic artist. And like generations of desert rats preceding me, I fell deeply under the spell of the Mojave. I repeatedly tried but failed to turn up any historic photographers who had worked intensively and exclusively in monochrome with a fine art approach to California’s deserts. I then realized that I could be that artist, one whose work could be intimately associated with the deserts of California. I had walked into many of the desert’s most remote canyons and climbed on mountain flanks and stood upon their summits. I had spent an untold number of days in the wide open silence and slept an equal number of nights on the ground under a dark sky brightly illuminated by the Milky Way (it has been recently suggested that as many as 80% of children born today will never see the Milky Way or starry nights). I was hooked by every enchanting bit of the California desert and wanted to tell its secret stories. I wanted to share my desert experiences with those who already were lovers and sought to change the minds of those who too easily dismissed the desert as “ugly” or “boring” without even knowing what is there. The California desert is my ideal artistic habitat. I need plenty of silence and space to roam and no one around to interfere with either - the desert offers this in spades. After some number of years of Michael Gordon’s pr