Joshua Tree Artist in Residency Recap

What a month spent living in Joshua Tree National Park. I have seen such beautiful landscapes, flora, and fauna I will have inspiration for years. I was able to finish three pieces during my stay but I have so many more that I am planning. Stay tuned for updates. 

Hall of Horrors Shawl: Hall of Horrors in Joshua Tree National Park is made of several rock formations with scrambling boulders, small slot canyons, and beautiful desert scenery. The nooks and crannies of these outcroppings are great to get lost in, finding surprising places to cool from the desert heat. 

Ladder-backed Woodpecker wristwarmers: These brightly colored birds nest in the desert trees of Joshua Tree National Park. Their flashy red crowns and black and white speckled plumage demand attention as they drill and fly around the Joshua trees. 

Colors of wildflowers I saw in Joshua Tree National Park in March 2026: An abundance of colors peppers Joshua Tree National Park in March. I recorded the color of wildflowers I saw during my month-long stay in the park and knitted them into this cowl. An exercise in data visualization that not only records the colors, but the days spent in the beautiful desert. 

Notes on this project: 

You can “read” the cowl starting at the slightly darker stripe and reading right to left following the rows in a spiral up the cowl. Each V-stitch represents a color of wildflower, a black color indicates the end of one day. 

You can see several trends, at the beginning of March there were a lot of yellow flowers blooming like creosote and brittlebush as well as purples of purple mat and chia. By the end of the month the hotter colors of beavertail cactus, hedgehog cactus, chuparosa, ocotillo, and paintbrush began to dominate. Ubiquitous throughout the month were orange globemallow, blue heliotrope, and purple desert lavender. The white and green Joshua tree blossoms were abundant as well, you can see many instances of white and light green together as young and old blossoms often graced the same Joshua tree. Don’t miss the “cheater” colors I knit in of non-wildflowers like the bright green lichen or the lovely glowing blue juniper berries. 

This visual representation of the colors of the desert will always be a better reminder of my time as artist-in-residence at Joshua Tree National Park than any of my journals I wrote during my stay. 

Joshua Tree National Park Artist-in-Residency

photo by Sergiy Galyonkin

I am so excited to have been chosen as Artist-in-Residence for Joshua Tree National Park for 2026. I will spend the month of March living in the park getting inspiration from the Mojave and Colorado desert landscapes. Get ready for more nature inspired textile art!

In the meantime, here are a few of my past desert inspired wearable textile art:

1. Sandstone Cliff, created as artist-in-residence at Capitol Reef National Park

2. Salt Flat Sunrise, from Bonneville Salt Flats

3. Indian Paintbrush, created as artist-in-residence at Black Rock Desert National Conservation Area

4. Great Basin Sky, created as artist-in-residence at Great Basin National Park

5. West Desert Hood, from Utah’s West Desert

Photo: Joshua Tree National Park by Christopher Michel, Creative Commons

Healing Waters

I have three works of art in the new exhibition Healing Waters: Restoring our Relationship with Utah Lake at the UVU Museum of Art. They are three knitted paper flowers that were once abundant in Utah Valley around Utah Lake but are no longer as prevalent: Ute ladies’ tresses, broadleaf cattail, and sego lilies. The sculptures highlight the fragility of plants in the Utah Lake ecosystem by rendering them in paper, a delicate but resilient medium. 

I grew up in and around Utah Lake and I am excited about how far it has come, it is more clean and healthy than it has been in a century. Come see the whole exhibit, it's up until September 27.

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Article in 15 Bytes

A new article about my art came out today in 15 Bytes, an e-newsletter about the arts in Utah. Written by David Pace, it outlines my art and practice. 

Have you subscribed to the 15 Bytes e-newsletters? It's free. Sign up today to keep up with the latest art news in the Beehive State: visual, performing, literary and everything in between.

Virginia Catherall is a Sweater Girl for Our Age

Spring Salon 2025

The Spring Salon at the Springville Museum of Art opened last month where you can see my wearable art Fireweed, created during my Glacier National Park residency. I am excited to have a piece in this year’s exhibition!

Virginia Catherall Fireweed, 2023 Hand-knit Merino wool Length: 73” (185.5 cm), Width: 10” (25.5 cm) Fireweed is abundant in Glacier National Park. Its bright purple flowers thrive in open meadows, roadsides and forest edges. Fireweed’s name comes from its ability to grow rapidly in areas affected by fire. With seeds that spread rapidly by wind, Fireweed can dominate a meadow, bathing the land with vibrant color. This artwork and pattern was produced as Artist-in-Residence at Glacier National Park.

Utah Arts and Museums 125th Anniversary Exhibit

Lovely exhibit at the UVU Museum of Art on the Utah Arts and Museums 125th Anniversary. It highlights its 125 years of collecting art and so much more. And I am so honored to have one of my works from their collection on display alongside some of my heroes and mentors in the art and museum world. If you have a chance, go see it. It’s up through March 15. 

Shown: Species of Concern: San Rafael Cactus, 2017, hand-knit linen paper. From the State of Utah Alice Merrill Horne Art Collection.

Glacier Time at Ogden Contemporary

 

If you want to see my visual data artwork Glacier Time in person, it is in the Statewide Annual UT ‘24 exhibition! Come see the show up until January 12th at Ogden Contemporary. 

Glacier Time is a visual representation of my time spent during my artist-in-residency last year at Glacier National Park. If you see the artwork in person, look closely to find when I saw my first bear, how much time I spent knitting vs. hiking, and the mousetrap incident at 3 am!