Palos Verdes

About this artwork

This artwork was selected to be part of the Arizona Biennial 2026 at the Tucson Museum of Art. Palos Verdes reflects my ongoing exploration of place as lived experience in the Sonoran Desert. Inspired by the palo verde trees native to Tucson and present throughout my neighborhood, the work translates daily observation into an immersive color-field surface built from thousands of hand-cut glass tesserae. Subtle variations of green evoke shifting light and seasonal rhythms of the desert landscape. Rather than depicting a specific scene, the mosaic invites viewers to experience place through color, texture, and accumulation—an abstract meditation on the quiet presence of these trees and the intimate relationship between land, light, and time. This Color Field Mosaic was created on a handmade substrate featuring tempered glass, hand-cut glass and iridescent tiles, stained glass, hand-cut glass rods, glass African beads, and iridescent shells.