HeyThere Projects in Joshua Tree, California, is a friendly place. “I naturally say ‘Hey!’ when people come in,” cofounder Aaron Smith says, and not even because of the name: “Just because it’s a nice, low-key greeting.” It’s that kind of energy, as if you already know each other, that permeates the gallery/shop/event space and its rotating displays of playful, colorful, craft-infused art, as well as its community-driven events.
The space was founded in 2019 by “intrepid artists and old friends” Mark Todd, a mixed-media artist, and Smith, a painter and art educator. HeyThere’s gallery often spotlights their artist friends and friends-of-friends from years spent living in New York, Los Angeles, and now the Joshua Tree community. Think the cheeky menagerie of Lorien Stern, candy-colored iconography of Martha Rich, and pop-culture-incised ceramics by tattooer-turned-potter Adam Shrewsbury. “We’ve tried to integrate art and craft together,” Smith says. “We both come from illustration backgrounds and fine art painting, but we are drawn to artists who are working across all these lines, blurring that traditional demarcation.” A recent show by LA artist Nick Aguayo included works on paper, with a limited run of unique hand-printed T-shirts that carried his painterly sensibility seamlessly into wearable art.
And certainly, the desert backdrop is rich, creative ground for artists: the meditative isolation, the stark and sculptural landscape, prickly flora (Chimayo cactus, yucca, and the iconic namesake trees), all caught against vast and vivid skies. “The way the art interfaces with the natural world in Joshua Tree is why many artists are drawn to us,” says Todd. “We’ve had artists come here to work and finish and produce their shows. Joshua Tree has a long history of being a draw, a mecca of sorts for creatives, and now there is infrastructure here to support them.”
Aaron Smith holds a sculpture by Godeleine de Rosamel. Mark Todd with the same sculpture.
