Heather James Marks 30 Years in Palm Desert

PALM DESERT — Helen Frankenthaler’s Lavender Stop stretches nearly 9½ feet across. Norman Rockwell’s Ticket Seller, painted in 1937, takes up a little more than two feet of wall. The two paintings offer very different ways into America the Beautiful: Shaping a Nation, one of the exhibitions visitors can see when Heather James Fine Art marks its 30th anniversary with a Thanksgiving weekend open house on Nov. 27 and 28.

The gallery opened in Palm Desert in 1996, when founders Heather Sacre and Jim Carona started out specializing in antiquities. Over three decades, its program grew to include Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. This year’s open house brings that range into focus through painting and a printmaking technique that rewards a closer look.

America the Beautiful traces how artists have pictured the country and its people during the nation’s 250th anniversary year. The Palm Desert show follows a summer presentation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and includes Maine scenes by N.C. and Andrew Wyeth and Wayne Thiebaud’s view of the Sacramento Delta. It runs through May 31, 2027.

In Pressing the Boundaries of Printmaking: Five Decades of Mixografia, texture is part of the image. The technique, developed in Mexico City through a collaboration with artist Rufino Tamayo, lets printmakers give handmade paper a raised surface. The exhibition includes Frankenthaler’s Guadalupe and several works by Ed Ruscha, including Clock and Ghost Station. It runs through Jan. 7, 2027.

The gallery also says it plans to show a Cubist work by Pablo Picasso, work by Vincent van Gogh and paintings by Elaine de Kooning from the artist’s family. The public announcement did not identify the Picasso or van Gogh pieces by title.

The open house runs Friday, Nov. 27, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday, Nov. 28, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Heather James Fine Art, 45188 Portola Avenue, Palm Desert.