Chair-ity, the anniversary fundraiser at Hi-Desert Artists, works because the object is so plain. A folding chair belongs to classrooms, church halls, backyard birthday parties, and every room that needs to become a room quickly. Turn one into art and the whole question changes. Who gets a seat? Who keeps the room open? Who looks twice before stacking the chair back against the wall?

Z107.7 reported that the transformed chairs were on display for the gallery's May 16 anniversary event and are headed for auction at a June 14 event, with proceeds supporting the gallery and ongoing arts programming. The date is enough to move now; it isn't enough to skip the phone call.

A Gallery Built for Working Artists

Hi-Desert Artists is still young enough for a two-year anniversary to feel like a live test, not a plaque. The group opened its Yucca Valley gallery in 2024 after a larger local art-room loss, then set about making the space useful: workshops, lessons, events, walls for local work, and a shop where art can leave with a neighbor instead of waiting for a distant collector.

Katie Nartonis is the current gallery director, the public-facing name attached to a room that depends on more than one person. Artist-run spaces in the Morongo Basin don't survive by romance alone. They survive by calendars, volunteers, rent checks, workshop fees, weekend foot traffic, and the odd generosity of turning a folding chair into a fundraising object. You can't separate the art from the upkeep for long.

The anniversary retrospective gives the chairs a wider room to answer: nearly 40 artists, with painting, photography, drawing, mixed media, ceramics, and sculpture all sharing the wall. One caption names Victoria Rothlisberg's "552 Million Years Ago," a title big enough to make a two-year birthday feel happily small. A young gallery can still hang work that thinks in deep time.

The Names on the Chairs

The Chair-ity roster carries its own High Desert roll call: Phil Miller, Paul Donaldson, Snake Jagger, Bonnie Brady, Julianne Elliot, Tracie Schatz, Marcia Geiger, Jen Shakti, Barry Scanlan, Krista Wargo, Esther Shaw, Ed Keesling, Eddie Tucker, and John Genesta. The count can wait; the names are the point.

Each name turns the fundraiser away from gala abstraction. This isn't a silent-auction table full of donated gift baskets. It is an artist-by-artist wager that a practical object can hold enough personality to make someone raise a proverbial paddle, write a check, and carry the piece home.

Yucca Valley has room for that kind of object. Compound Yucca Valley, the art-walk habit, highway storefronts, and small workshop rooms have already trained local eyes to expect art in places that still have roll-up doors, concrete floors, or a thrift-store sense of possibility. Hi-Desert Artists fits that grid without needing to imitate anyone else on Twentynine Palms Highway.

Before the Auction

If you're going, go for the chairs first. Ask the gallery for the June 14 time before you leave, then give yourself space to look at the retrospective too. The chair is the hook, but the room is the point: a young Yucca Valley gallery asking ordinary furniture to help pay for the next class, the next wall, the next artist who needs a place to be seen.

The hand-painted and creatively decorated chairs will be on display at the gallery through June 14. Visitors may place silent bids on the chairs during regular gallery hours: Mondays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 3 p.m.

The fundraiser will conclude Sunday, June 14, with a Chair-ity Auction celebration featuring an ice cream social beginning at noon. The live auction starts at 2 p.m. led by auctioneer Ruben Rodriguez. The starting bid for the live auction will be the highest bid on the silent bid sheets.