Recent Events
Please join us at A-Z West on Saturday, June 13th at 6PM for a durational performance, concluding with a collective sunset gathering.
High Desert Test Sites
Fourth Annual Benefit Dinner with guest artist Andrea Bowers
March 28, 2026
High Desert Test Sites with guest artist Andrea Bowers is pleased to announce our third annual benefit dinner, a vital opportunity to support our creative work for artists in the high desert and beyond.
Mark your calendars for Saturday, March 28, 2025 and get ready for an unforgettable evening in Joshua Tree, where art and community come together.
Way Station is a new photographic installation by An-My Lê culminating her 2025 HDTS Fellowship.
The works will open on Saturday, January 17th, 2026, from 12:00-4:00 PM
Way Station is situated within the Planar Pavilions, which are just north of A-Z West/HDTS at the intersection of Center Avenue and Old Dale Road.
The Planar Pavilions are accessible to the public seven days a week from sunrise to sunset.
New Date: January 10, 2026
High Desert Test Sites Fellow An-My Lê in conversation with MOCA Senior Curator Anna Katz, hosted in the MOCA Grand auditorium, LA.
Everything Change nurtures a regional community of practitioners engaged in climate-responsive artistic practices rooted in the desert’s legacy of adaptation, reinvention, and partnership with the land. Public engagement is invited through experimental, inclusive art.
Everything Change Reading Circle is an invitation for climate arts practitioners and interested community members to read or perform their realized and in-progress works, or excerpts from favorite works on climate-responsive themes. Join us to listen or share.
Readers include: Sarah-Dawn Albani, Annie Connole, Jean Grant, Jardine Libaire, Ruth Nolan, and Natalie Raymond. For other community members who wish to read, there will be a sign-up at the event. The circle will be facilitated by Cheryl Slean and begin with a guided meditation.
High Desert Test Sites is a Cultural Partner of Joshua Treenial 2025!
High Desert Test Sites is excited to host Milk Thistle for an afternoon of healing, ritual, and restoration. You’re invited to drop in anytime between 12:30 and 4pm for a constellation of intimate, hands-on offerings designed to cleanse, ground, and realign the spirit.
Participating practitioners include:
Corinna Rosella, offering custom flower essence rituals to help recalibrate your emotional and energetic field
Jaya, with The Bootleg Tarot—an intuitive reading practice accompanied by playful paper mâché crafting
Cherry, guiding clearing sessions to release trapped emotions and invite balance back into the body
Each ritual session is individually priced, so you can engage with one—or all—of the experiences as you feel called. Milk Thistle will also have a selection of tea samples, apothecary items, and ritual supplies available for purchase.
Make this a meaningful start to your Joshua Treenial weekend: stop by HDTS for healing and reflection before heading to BoxoProjects for the opening events from 2–7pm.
In this 4-hour generative workshop, we’ll explore and reframe the climate crisis and how our art and storytelling can be part of the solution. Through pre-reading, discussion, guided visualization, worldbuilding and other writing prompts, we’ll excavate our assumptions, tropes, myths, and imagine futures we want to live in.
The workshop will be facilitated by climate storytelling experts Cheryl Slean and Carmiel Banasky; produced by Cheryl Slean and Annie Connole in partnership with High Desert Test Sites.
It is open to practicing writers, filmmakers and performing artists.
Workshop participants will have the opportunity to informally share or perform workshop-generated works-in-progress at a TBD date later in 2025.
The workshop is offered freely to participants with registration.
REGISTER HERE
High Desert Test Sites
Third Annual Benefit Dinner with guest artist Jack Pierson
March 22, 2025
High Desert Test Sites with guest artist Jack Pierson is pleased to announce our third annual benefit dinner, a vital opportunity to support our creative work for artists in the high desert and beyond.
Mark your calendars for Saturday, March 22, 2025 and get ready for an unforgettable evening in Joshua Tree, where art and community come together.
HDTS and local multidisciplinary artist Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs present High Desert Choir, a free collaborative vocal group to foster connection among a vast desert community. The Choir supports dialogue and action around community needs of mental health, civic engagement and environmental conservation.
Rehearsals are held at A-Z West (62923 Sullivan Rd, Joshua Tree).
Free and open to all choir-curious to participate and/or observe, all bodies and experience levels (including no experience) are welcome. Kids welcome! Email highdesertchoir@gmail.com to join the mailing list for rehearsal schedules.
The project will culminate with “Distance Duet,” a series of outdoor public performances in the bouldered wash at A-Z West, from Nov. 22–23, 2024.
HDTS and local multidisciplinary artist Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs present High Desert Choir, a free collaborative vocal group to foster connection among a vast desert community. The Choir supports dialogue and action around community needs of mental health, civic engagement and environmental conservation. Rehearsals begin this Saturday, September 21, 11am–12:30pm at A-Z West (62923 Sullivan Rd, Joshua Tree). Free and open to all choir-curious to participate and/or observe, all bodies and experience levels (including no experience) are welcome. Kids welcome! Email highdesertchoir@gmail.com to join the mailing list for rehearsal schedules.
The project will culminate with “Distance Duet,” a series of outdoor public performances in the bouldered wash at A-Z West, from Nov. 22–23, 2024.
HDTS and local multidisciplinary artist Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs present High Desert Choir, a free collaborative vocal group to foster connection among a vast desert community. The Choir supports dialogue and action around community needs of mental health, civic engagement and environmental conservation. Rehearsals begin this Saturday, September 21, 11am–12:30pm at A-Z West (62923 Sullivan Rd, Joshua Tree). Free and open to all choir-curious to participate and/or observe, all bodies and experience levels (including no experience) are welcome. Kids welcome! Email highdesertchoir@gmail.com to join the mailing list for rehearsal schedules.
The project will culminate with “Distance Duet,” a series of outdoor public performances in the bouldered wash at A-Z West, from Nov. 22–23, 2024.
Presented in partnership with Tokyo-based Curator's Cube and High Desert Test Sites, JINEN—a traveling exhibition—features work from the artists Dan John Anderson, Kazunori Hamana, Yu Kobayashi and Ido Yoshimoto
please join Andrea Zittel
+ the Board of High Desert Test Sites
in support of HDTS
with guest artist Liza Lou
SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 2024
5–6 pm - Sunset cocktails + special performance by Reuben and the Dark
6–8.30 pm - Seated dinner + auction featuring original artwork by Liza Lou
Attire – Dirt road dressy
A-Z West, 62923 Sullivan Road, Joshua Tree
The A-Z West Works Store at A-Z West will be closed on Thursday, February 8 and Saturday, February 10 as we participate in Intersect Palm Springs, an art and design fair taking place at Palm Springs Convention Center from February 8–11. Come visit us at booth 111 for new Platforms, Stools, Sconces, and Covers! We’re hosting a booth talk on Sunday, February 11 at noon.
Opening Night Preview
Thursday, February 8 | 4 - 9 pm (4 - 6 pm VIP/All Access Pass only)
General Admission
Thursday, February 8 | 6 - 9 pm
Friday, February 9 | 10 am - 7 pm
Saturday, February 10 | 10 am - 7 pm
Sunday, February 11 | 10 am - 3 pm
Join us for an evening of food and drinks. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.
Join us for an evening of food and drinks. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.