DLD | Sharon Davis | Ep 124

Artist and founder of Earth House Studios, Sharon Davis creates colorful art and installations at her home in Morongo Valley. Sharon and I bonded as two Jersey girls, so you might get hungry listening to the beginning of this episode. Sharon left NJ for the first time in in 1974 and came to California, landing in Huntington Beach, moving on to Moreno Valley, then Palm Springs. After that she's moved between the east coast and Texas, Virginia and Maryland, with a few stops back to California in between. Her first desert experience was in Palm Springs, which Sharon found to be way too hot. When she did decide to come back west, having some pretty specifics requirements for her property, she thought she'd land in Pioneertown, but found the perfect place in Morongo Valley - a place she feels doesn't get enough credit and notice in the basin. Sharon has always liked art and being creative, dabbling in many different types of art from drawing to sewing. As a kid, a woman came to her parents house to buy a couch, saw some of Sharon's art and invited her to come apprentice with her husband, who worked for Tiffany's. Sharon spent one Saturday with the man and another young artist, learning how to inlay enamel with toothpicks. After have her kids, Sharon set aside her creativity and art, only using it to work on projects she typically gave away as Christmas gifts. She finds herself very inspired by the desert and the night sky and tells a story about her high school art teacher, with whom she re-connected with many years later. We also hear a bit of history around the Morongo Valley Art Colony. Being part Cherokee, Sharon tells us a bit about ceremony, sweat lodges and a recent art installation event she hosted at her home to bring awareness to the disappearances of over 6,000 missing native American females – women and children.