In the high desert, there’s a sensibility, an aesthetic, that’s a little bit different. Anna Stump loves that difference.
The long-time artist and educator grew up in Chula Vista, earned a fine arts graduate degree from San Diego State University, and taught at San Diego City College and Grossmont College for almost 20 years. She was ready for a change, though, and it came in the form of a move to Twentynine Palms, about 120 miles northeast, an entry point to Joshua Tree National Park and the start of a new art project she calls Mojaveland. It’s a nonprofit, interactive art center featuring a miniature golf course with each hole designed by a different local artist. Part of the goal is to encourage community and multigenerational play that comes with creating art.
“I’m an artist and I’m a painter, but I’ve always been interested in performance. Lately, I’ve understood that idea more as social practice. Social practice is a little bit different than performance art because it’s more community minded and it involves more facets than, traditionally, art does,” she says. “When I retired from teaching, which I did during the pandemic … we had already bought a property in Twentynine Palms. I knew that I was going to need a project to do because, although I love painting, it just was not enough for me.”
The original iteration of Mojaveland ran from 2021 to 2023, but had to close due to accessibility and permitting issues. She’s since created a mobile version, which is currently on display with six holes at the Hyde Art Gallery at Grossmont College, through Nov. 6. Stump talked about the inspiration for the project; collaborating with other local artists, the city, and the community; and creating Mojaveland as a vehicle for joy. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/author/lisa-deaderick/.)
Q: What inspired the creation of Mojaveland? Where did the idea come from?
A: Besides trying to serve the families, as a college professor, I served mainly community college students and it was hard for them, for their families, to accept that they wanted to be an art or design major. I wanted to start reaching kids before they got to college and their parents, or their uncles or something, were like, ‘No, you’re not going to be an art major.’ I wanted to be able to reach families and show them that art is more than being a starving artist; you can help community, you can make money, you can think outside of the box and solve social problems through art. It felt like I needed to reach families with younger children and not wait until they got to the community college level when they were getting a lot of pressure not to be an artist. They were getting pressure to go into computer science or nursing. My thing was, do both.
Another inspiration out here is there is something called the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Museum. It’s in Joshua Tree, and Noah Purifoy is a really important artist. He’s not alive anymore; he spent the last 20 years of his life out here in Joshua Tree, working in an outdoor studio. It’s 10 acres and he used trash that that he found in the desert and made these installations. It’s very magical and I always take friends there. I love that place. I was thinking, what if you could play in a place like this? That would reach even more people. The thing about the high desert is that we have this aesthetic up here about recycling and reusing because it’s so dry, nothing rusts. There’s trash around: there’s old metal, there’s old wood, there’s even plastic, which is bad, but the stuff doesn’t disintegrate. People dump it in the desert, so a lot of my encouraging of the artists is to use the Noah Purifoy esthetic, which was to pick up trash, find what’s already there, repurpose it. He has sculptures that are totems of toilets, old broken lawn chairs, and things like that. So, my Mojaveland aesthetic is to reuse what you have.
Q: A smaller, mobile version of this project is currently on display at the Hyde Art Gallery with six holes. Can you talk about how the initial Mojaveland functioned and what led to the current, mobile version?
A: I bought property because, again, the land is cheap out here, which was zoned correctly. That’s where the politics come in. I started working with the planning department because I know zoning is important. I’m not going to put this miniature golf course on my residence because that would not be OK. Even though the zoning was correct, I had a problem with access. I had a problem with people being able to drive into my parking area because of permitting laws in Twentynine Palms; safety and permitting. There’s all these rules that you have to follow when you’re trying to create a public space, which I learned about because I needed to work with the city to do this. The project was always an art project, and I was open only one weekend a month. It was totally free, so people could come in play. I had a donation jar, but it was like coffee money. I started the project in 2020 and in the spring of 2021 I opened the project. I had five holes and people came out. Some of them were artists and they would ask if they could design a hole, and I would say, “Sure, here’s the sort of thing we’re going for. And, it has to be playable. Give me some drawings.” Sometimes they would do it. I had a guy walk in and he’s like, “You don’t have a windmill” and three months later he calls me and says he has my windmill. That windmill is what you’ll see in the Hyde gallery.
So, I ran the project for two years, and by the end I had 13 holes. We also had art teachers there. After people would play miniature golf, they would do an art project. There was an old shack on the property and we just started painting on the walls. It was sort of a two-part thing: play miniature golf and then dip your paintbrush in some paint and help make a mural. Then, the city was starting to say, like, ‘We’re watching you. You’re getting too popular, you don’t have an official parking area, you don’t have ADA access,’ so that was a big deal and I knew that was going to be a problem. It wasn’t a business; it was only an art project that was open to my friends, which was a lot of people. So, I knew this project was going to have to come to an end, but I wanted it to live, so I started making mobile holes. I would go to the farmers’ market with the mobile holes and I reached more people that way. People would ask about Mojaveland and I’d tell them we were open the last weekend of the month, so come by and bring your kids and bring grandma. One of the great things about miniature golf is it’s one of the only activities in which multiple generations can have fun together, which I love. I would see grandparents, mom and dad, aunts and uncles, surly teenagers and little kids, and they’d all come in this big group, and they’d be laughing and playing together. It was really very gratifying.
Q: What would you say is the purpose of Mojaveland?
A: The purpose of Mojaveland is to create joy. That’s it. It’s to introduce families, children—everybody—to art that is accessible. It’s not a museum, it’s not some kind of highfalutin thing. Some people don’t even know it’s art, even though I would say that this is an art project and these are artists who created these holes.
It’s very collaborative. I work with a lot of people—artists, my contractor, PR people, the city. In 2023, the city was finally like, ‘OK, you can’t do this anymore. You’re closed, you have to stop.’ I knew it, I’d pushed it far enough because you can’t just break the rules. Then, they called me a few weeks later and said they like my project and they like me, how about they give me public land? So, they leased me this land for $1 a year. It was going to be a public park, but they didn’t get the funding. It’s desert that’s behind the community theater and the great thing is that I get to share the community theater’s parking lot and I don’t have to do any street improvements. That’s something developers normally have to do, which is millions of dollars; miniature golf makes no money. In the beginning, I thought this could be a business and I realized right away, no way. This is a nonprofit and I can get grants because I’m serving the public and people are interested in it.
Q: How would you describe the experience of visiting Mojaveland? And what was your process for conceptualizing this project?
A: When people visit, a lot of the kids have never played miniature golf because our community is very disadvantaged. There is a miniature golf course down in Palm Desert, but that’s pretty far for people to drive. So, a lot of kids have never played. Here, the parents sort of show the kids how to putt, and I’m watching them and it’s very light and social and fun. Some people do not want to play miniature golf, they just want to take photographs of the work. It’s outside. I have no electricity or water; it’s very, very low-tech. There are no screens except for the people taking pictures.
In the beginning, I reached out to some theme park designers. I took myself sort of seriously that way, which was sort of fun. Walt Disney had these steps for creating something, and they’re really pretty interesting. His project has gotten so far away from what his original thing was, which was very similar to mine—I want kids to have fun, have it be a magical place, and have it be interactive. So, I do follow those precepts. He talks about the storytelling and moving from one place to another, and miniature golf is sort of a curated art show because you generally start at hole number one and go through to hole number 18 in an order.
Q: What were you looking for in the artists you approached to be part of designing each hole on the course?
A: Mostly, artists reach out to me, but sometimes I do reach out to them. Besides the miniature golf, I also have sculpture garden and some artists want to just have sculpture there. I pay a modest honorarium, but it’s not what their work is worth, I have to say. I know that the artwork will constantly need to be fixed because anything that’s interactive breaks apart. Also, the desert is really harsh, so things fall apart out here. Something lasts maybe three years, four years, and then it has to be replaced or redone. Mostly artists came to me and they would say they love it, it’s so fun, share their ideas. I would work with them because a lot of times they don’t understand that miniature golf has to be fun and easy. It can’t be too hard; the ball can’t get stuck, the ball has to be seen, it has to be playable.
Q: Which hole did you design?
A: I haven’t designed any holes by myself. I help with the conceptual stuff a lot, but if there was a hole that you could say that was mostly mine, it’s the Do-It-Yourself hole. It’s one of my portable holes and it’s at Grossmont College. My mom was a kindergarten teacher in Chula Vista when I was growing up. She taught her whole career and I watched how she worked with the kids and let them play. They had these big blocks, so that hole is basically just a pile of blocks and ramps and things, and the kids and the adults will change the course. After a while, you’re playing and it’s like, ‘Huh, I can do this. I could make a mini golf course,’ and here’s a hole that allows you to do that. And that hole is in honor of my mom.
Q: Aesthetically, you’ve named Noah Purifoy as an inspiration for Mojaveland. According to the foundation in his name, Purifoy was a Black artist who spent much of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. One of his earliest sculptures was formed from the charred wreckage from the 1965 Watts rebellion, and he was a founding director of the Watts Towers Art Center. Later, after moving to the Mojave desert, he spent his remaining years building out 10 acres of large-scale sculptures made entirely from discarded materials. Can you talk about what it is about him and his work that has inspired you in Mojaveland?
A: Yeah, he is so inspirational to me and to many of the artists here. It’s so interesting because here’s a whole other artist group down in the Coachella Valley, the Palm Springs/Palm Desert area, and the artwork down there looks totally different than the art up here. That work is mainly about modernism because they have all this modernist architecture, and it’s about pop, a lot of it. It’s very bright, it’s shiny. You know, it’s the gay culture down there, to put it bluntly, so that is so cool that the work down there is so different than the work up here. The work up here is mainly influenced, I’d say, by Noah Purifoy. And, besides his work, the way he lived his life as a social practice artist-even though that term wasn’t used, he lived that way-he was totally involved in politics, in serving his community, so that is super inspiring to me. Not only the aesthetics, but the way he basically dedicated his life to his community.