In Search of Noah Purifoy

In search of Noah Purifoy and his desert art outside Joshua Tree National Park in California.

The desert was your gallery
Roadside ditches were your palette
Repurposed mundane into art
A second purpose in your second verse

If you could see what you left behind
The pilgrimage of urban types
down dusty desert roads
No one happens upon your work
They are driven here by curiosity

Viewing your life at different angles
Framing clouds and suns and shielding their eyes
trying to see what you saw
internalizing what they see, what you left behind

Art as statement to your times
Art as testament to one life
as history repeats itself
The metal rusts, the cloth abrades

the passages of time
the passing of a rhyme
bring new life to what you wrought
new shape, new eyes, new art

Though you no longer pick roadside ditches
the desert is still your gallery
transforming the work you began
the work you entrusted to the elements
that inspired and moved you.


— Mark Butkus


This poem was composed upon finding Noah Purifoy's desert oasis of art.