I closed out 2025 in the California desert.
We spent a few days in Palm Springs and Joshua Tree, which meant a lot of driving, wandering, eating, photographing, and staring at things that looked completely different depending on where the sun was sitting in the sky.
One of my favorite stops was the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum, which I'd visited before but wanted to see again.
Purifoy's work has always stayed with me. His assemblages are made from things that have been discarded, overlooked, broken, or left behind, transformed into something strange and beautiful and sometimes unsettling. And the desert is the perfect place for that kind of work because there is so much space to look.
© 2025 Lia Ballentine
Being here was a great way to remember how to see.
Seeing is something I know how to do. I've always been someone who notices things: the shape of a building, the texture of something weathered, an unexpected combination of colors, the way afternoon light falls across a wall. I've always been drawn to the things that other people might walk right past.
But I think I'd gotten a little out of practice.
Being somewhere so visually expansive made me slow down again. A piece of metal caught the light. A shadow became part of the composition. Something weathered became more interesting because of the way the sun hit it. Colors that might have felt ordinary somewhere else suddenly seemed electric against all that earth and sky.
There is a difference between looking and really seeing, and the difference is about paying attention.
I want to pay more attention this year. More noticing. More photographs. More art. More making things because I'm curious about them. More focus on light, texture, shape, color and all the little details that make the world feel interesting.
Not everything needs to have a purpose. A lesson I'm still learning, but I'm making progress here.
But this short trip was a good reminder that sometimes it's enough to see something and think, that's nice. I like that. 🥰
