BLACK ROCK ART GALLERY AND EXHIBIT

This project involved the conversion of redundant exhibit space at Joshua Tree National Park to a gallery for rotating exhibits of artwork. The space is located in a protected historic building, so no permanent alterations could be made. JT Lab designed, fabricated, and installed the new gallery infrastructure. New display panels utilize the same attachment points that were created for the original exhibit panels. Exhibiting Artist in Residence work and other programming, the gallery went dark at the start of COVID. Once the building re-opened for limited access, the park preferred not to exhibit guest artists, thinking it unfair to the artists who would get very limited exposure for their work. For this period, JTLab created a large format photo exhibit, intended to be easily seen from a distance, to keep the area active, and provide content for visitors until normal programming could resume.

FURNACE CREEK MOSAIC

Furnace Creek Visitor Center interprets Death Valley National Park’s famous Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America and one of the hottest places on Earth. To keep visitors safe, the park commissioned an interpretive panel to be located adjacent to the site’s frequently photographed thermometer. The intention was to convey the message that the lower the elevation, the hotter the temperature and conversely, the higher the elevation, the lower the temperature. An abstract, glass mosaic illustrates the various elevations of the park’s notable sites and complements the visitor center’s midcentury aesthetic. JT lab conceived, designed, and fabricated this permanent exhibit.

GRAM PARSONS ANNUAL MEMORIAL EXHIBIT

Joshua Tree National Park is one of the nation’s few parks to have a rock n’ roll music history associated with it. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Gram Parsons, the park asked JT Lab to devise a temporary exhibit to both acknowledge this difficult history for Parsons’ loyal fans and to educate others about his story. For this project, JT Lab retrieved and refurbished bases; researched, wrote, and designed the exhibits; sourced images, secured rights; fabricated panels; and installed the exhibit, all within a short timeline. These exhibits will now go on display in the park annually.

BE TORTOISE AWARE CAMPAIGN

The Be Tortoise Aware campaign is an ongoing project initiated by USFWS and NPS. JT Lab was asked to develop a public awareness campaign to address an increase in tortoise mortality from vehicle strikes in Joshua Tree National Park. The campaign takes a multi-valent approach, utilizing targeted messaging on a wide variety of media. In particular it seeks out opportunities to connect with visitors at points of decision.

JOSHUA TREE DANCING FOREST

The Dancing Forest was a collaborative effort with Joshua Tree National Park to devise a temporary installation based on the idea of creating a Joshua tree themed wind waver. The installation is designed for special events, and is scalable to adapt to a variety of situations. Dancing Forest is intended to be a fun, eye-catching, and dynamic way to bring the park to the people. In 2023, the forest made its debut at Palm Springs Pride where a selection of the smaller trees rolled through the center of town as a parade float.

Homo sapiens x

Completed by Rebecca Lowry in 2015, Hsx consists of a series of five exhibits designed to resemble typical NPS signage. Presenting subspecies of Joshua Tree National Park visitors from a natural history point of view, the work addresses important issues of public safety and best practices with a touch of humor.

ARTIST JENNY KANE: ARTISTS’ TEA

Artists' Tea is a program developed by local artist Jenny Kane. Established as a JT Lab pilot program in 2016, Artists’ Tea was handed over to the Joshua Tree National Park Council for the Arts in 2018 where it continued as an ongoing and popular program. Designed to foster conversations, these Sunday gatherings connected the local and visiting art community to the park, where they would come to hear a short presentation, witness a demonstration, discuss ideas, or simply enjoy a cup of tea. This program has now been taken over by the Joshua Tree National Park Association and is currently being reconceived as a vehicle to connect with the park’s Coachella Valley communities.

THE WORTH BAGLEY STONE

Said to be the last shoot-out of the wild west, the gunfight between Worth Bagley and Bill Keys was a significant event in the late mining period of Joshua Tree National Park. It was also a major event in the life of Bill Keys, which he commemorated with a carved stone he erected at the site upon his return home from San Quentin Prison. Unfortunately, this stone was damaged to the point where it could no longer be left out in the park. JT Lab assisted the park in creating a more resilient stand-in marker with similar qualities to the original stone, but that does not attempt to perfectly replicate the original.

NIGHT SIGHT

In 2017 Lava Beds National Park commissioned several experimental panels to explore technologies for creating waysides that would remain visible after dark. JT Lab’s Night Sight panel utilized modern, high intensity glow-in-the-dark pigments. Requiring no power source other than daily sun exposure, the panel tested text at differing scales, different colors of paint, time viability, and endurance in outdoor conditions. The panel glowed late into the night and withstood environmental conditions well for three years until it was damaged by the Caldwell Fire in 2020.

TORTOISE CAMPAIGN PRIDE STICKER

One component of the Be Tortoise Aware campaign is the utilization of stickers to act as campaign ambassadors, particularly delivering tortoise protection information in event settings where rangers are unable to verbally communicate tortoise messaging. The pull-away backs of the stickers deliver specific messaging, while the fronts contain simpler texts, campaign graphics, and visual appeal. The version shown was created for a Pride event. Other designs are handed out by rangers during the course of normal park operations, often after programs or while roving.

starcount

StarCount was a project developed for Joshua Tree National Park’s annual night sky festival. Its aim was to address the issue of light pollution. Prominent, low-tech “celestoscopes” were placed in high visibility areas as part of a mock science experiment to study visible stars, treating them as an endangered species. During the festival, astronomers came by nightly to take counts of stars and visitors could record counts themselves. Additional information about light pollution was available from free tear-away posters attached to the devices. 

ARTIST JAIME RUSSOM: PINHOLE PHOTOGRAPHY

At the November 11, 2016 JT Lab Artists' Tea, artist Jaime Russom discussed her explorations of photography using a pinhole camera. She created a pinhole camera from within the boulders at Cap Rock and created this image by exposing photo-sensitive paper on site, then developing the image in the dark room.

TIPPLE TIME

Silver Bell Mine is an historic site within Joshua Tree National Park. Two notable structures remain from its heyday as an operational mine: large heavy timber ore bins, or "tipples". The timbers at the base of both were experiencing rot and required replacement. Materials were helicoptered into wilderness, where the tipples were raised up on jacks, squared, and the timbers replaced with new wood wherever necessary. Efforts were made to retain as much original material as possible, including historic hardware. 

JT Lab was asked to document the process of the Silver Bell Mine reconstruction. In doing so, three types of photos were captured: Documentary photographs intended primarily for park reference, Interpretive photographs that tell the story of the preservation work, and Fine Art photographs that tell a more fundamental conceptual story of time exploring relationships between new and old, technology, weathering and change.