Portuguese artist Miguel Palma has been commissioned to develop the first project for the Desert Initiative. Palma will be collaborating with scientists, engineers and others to develop a vehicle that will record elements of the natural desert and project the imagery in urban desert environments.
Valley of the Sunflowers
The Desert Initiative is supporting documentation of the Valley of the Sunflowers, a collaborative temporary public art project that is bringing a two-acre field of sunflowers to a vacant city block in downtown Phoenix. The sunflowers will be harvested by students at the BioScience High School who will press the seeds for oil to produce bio-fuel for a hybrid solar/bio-fuel vehicle they have designed and are building.
The project is a collaboration between the BioScience High School and Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation through their Adaptive Reuse of Temporary Space (A.R.T.S.) program. Initial seed funding has been provided by Intel and others.
Project documentation includes photography by Craig Smith and time-lapse photography of the growth of the sunflowers.
The ASU Art Museum and the Desert Initiative maintain an Artist Residency facility in the Roosevelt Row Arts District in downtown Phoenix. The facility includes live/work units for up to six artists as well as a small storefront exhibition venue.