PROJECTS
JTLab collaborates with parks and other agencies and organizations to realize concrete creative projects. We are a resource for parks when they have an idea or a need that can’t be resolved with normal processes or for when they just want a fresh insight on the familiar. As a donor supported organization, JTLab can often produce projects at reduced or no cost to parks. Park dollars must often go to essential services, leaving worthy project ideas unrealized due to lack of funding. We aim to ensure that these are given life.
Use the form on our Contacts page if you, your park unit, organization or agency has a question or is in need of assistance.
View into a gallery with wood walls and ceiling. Large format photographs hang from larger white panels attached to walls. Joshua Tree National Park.
BLACK ROCK ART GALLERY AND EXHIBIT
This project involved the conversion of redundant exhibit space at Joshua Tree National Park to a gallery for rotating exhibits of artwork. The space is located in a protected historic building, so no permanent alterations could be made. JT Lab designed, fabricated, and installed the new gallery infrastructure. New display panels utilize the same attachment points that were created for the original exhibit panels. Exhibiting Artist in Residence work and other programming, the gallery went dark at the start of COVID. Once the building re-opened for limited access, the park preferred not to exhibit guest artists, thinking it unfair to the artists who would get very limited exposure for their work. For this period, JTLab created a large format photo exhibit, intended to be easily seen from a distance, to keep the area active, and provide content for visitors until normal programming could resume.
View of front corner of Furnace Creek Visitor Center with park hills in background. In foreground stands large digital therrmometer and beside it a mosaic with an abstract depiction of park sites. Death Valley National Park.
FURNACE CREEK MOSAIC
Furnace Creek Visitor Center interprets Death Valley National Park’s famous Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America and one of the hottest places on Earth. To keep visitors safe, the park commissioned an interpretive panel to be located adjacent to the site’s frequently photographed thermometer. The intention was to convey the message that the lower the elevation, the hotter the temperature and conversely, the higher the elevation, the lower the temperature. An abstract, glass mosaic illustrates the various elevations of the park’s notable sites and complements the visitor center’s midcentury aesthetic. JT lab conceived, designed, and fabricated this permanent exhibit.
Expansive desert view with mountains in the distance and a joshua tree forest. In foreground, a solitary woman stands reading an exhibit on which can be seen the face of Gram Parsons, printed at larger than life size. Joshua Tree National Park.
GRAM PARSONS ANNUAL MEMORIAL EXHIBIT
Joshua Tree National Park is one of the nation’s few parks to have a rock n’ roll music history associated with it. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Gram Parsons, the park asked JT Lab to devise a temporary exhibit to both acknowledge this difficult history for Parsons’ loyal fans and to educate others about his story. For this project, JT Lab retrieved and refurbished bases; researched, wrote, and designed the exhibits; sourced images, secured rights; fabricated panels; and installed the exhibit, all within a short timeline. These exhibits will now go on display in the park annually.
View at ground level of an empty desert campsite. Creosote bushes and joshua trees. In the foreground stands a campsite number post, with a 12 at the top and various signs attached including one with an image of a tortoise on it that reads “Be Tortoise Aware. Check Under Your Vehicle.” Joshua Tree National Park.
BE TORTOISE AWARE CAMPAIGN
The Be Tortoise Aware campaign is an ongoing project initiated by USFWS and NPS. JT Lab was asked to develop a public awareness campaign to address an increase in tortoise mortality from vehicle strikes in Joshua Tree National Park. The campaign takes a multi-valent approach, utilizing targeted messaging on a wide variety of media. In particular it seeks out opportunities to connect with visitors at points of decision.
A national park ranger stands smiling amidst a group of inflated wind wavers designed to look like joshua trees. She has a rainbow pride flag in her shirt pocket. Palm Springs, CA.
JOSHUA TREE DANCING FOREST
The Dancing Forest was a collaborative effort with Joshua Tree National Park to devise a temporary installation based on the idea of creating a Joshua tree themed wind waver. The installation is designed for special events, and is scalable to adapt to a variety of situations. Dancing Forest is intended to be a fun, eye-catching, and dynamic way to bring the park to the people. In 2023, the forest made its debut at Palm Springs Pride where a selection of the smaller trees rolled through the center of town as a parade float.
Homo sapiens x
Completed by Rebecca Lowry in 2015, Hsx consists of a series of five exhibits designed to resemble typical NPS signage. Presenting subspecies of Joshua Tree National Park visitors from a natural history point of view, the work addresses important issues of public safety and best practices with a touch of humor.
A desert view in the distance, framed by large, sculpted boulders. In the foreground, a group of people stand around a picnic table laughing and talking. A tea cart with an umbrella stands off to one side. Joshua Tree National Park.
ARTIST JENNY KANE: ARTISTS’ TEA
Artists' Tea is a program developed by local artist Jenny Kane. Established as a JT Lab pilot program in 2016, Artists’ Tea was handed over to the Joshua Tree National Park Council for the Arts in 2018 where it continued as an ongoing and popular program. Designed to foster conversations, these Sunday gatherings connected the local and visiting art community to the park, where they would come to hear a short presentation, witness a demonstration, discuss ideas, or simply enjoy a cup of tea. This program has now been taken over by the Joshua Tree National Park Association and is currently being reconceived as a vehicle to connect with the park’s Coachella Valley communities.
Desert scene with large boulder piles and joshua trees in background. Ground level view. In foreground a thick, steel panel about two feet tall is embedded in the ground. On the front are engraved the words: “Here is where Worth Bagley Bit the dust At tHE HAND OF W.F. KEYS MAY 11, 1943.” Joshua Tree National Park.
THE WORTH BAGLEY STONE
Said to be the last shoot-out of the wild west, the gunfight between Worth Bagley and Bill Keys was a significant event in the late mining period of Joshua Tree National Park. It was also a major event in the life of Bill Keys, which he commemorated with a carved stone he erected at the site upon his return home from San Quentin Prison. Unfortunately, this stone was damaged to the point where it could no longer be left out in the park. JT Lab assisted the park in creating a more resilient stand-in marker with similar qualities to the original stone, but that does not attempt to perfectly replicate the original.
Image of a forest edge at dusk, very low light. In the foreground is a park exhibit that appears completely black except for words and an image of the sky with an owl and bats in flight, as well as the glowing eyes of cats emerging from the blackness. Lava Beds National Park.
NIGHT SIGHT
In 2017 Lava Beds National Park commissioned several experimental panels to explore technologies for creating waysides that would remain visible after dark. JT Lab’s Night Sight panel utilized modern, high intensity glow-in-the-dark pigments. Requiring no power source other than daily sun exposure, the panel tested text at differing scales, different colors of paint, time viability, and endurance in outdoor conditions. The panel glowed late into the night and withstood environmental conditions well for three years until it was damaged by the Caldwell Fire in 2020.
Image of the front and the back of a round sticker. In the background, the sticker shows a tortoise image surrounded by a rainbow and includes the words “Show You Care”. In the foreground, the sticker lists things park visitors can do to prevent tortoise road deaths. Joshua Tree National Park.
TORTOISE CAMPAIGN PRIDE STICKER
One component of the Be Tortoise Aware campaign is the utilization of stickers to act as campaign ambassadors, particularly delivering tortoise protection information in event settings where rangers are unable to verbally communicate tortoise messaging. The pull-away backs of the stickers deliver specific messaging, while the fronts contain simpler texts, campaign graphics, and visual appeal. The version shown was created for a Pride event. Other designs are handed out by rangers during the course of normal park operations, often after programs or while roving.
starcount
StarCount was a project developed for Joshua Tree National Park’s annual night sky festival. Its aim was to address the issue of light pollution. Prominent, low-tech “celestoscopes” were placed in high visibility areas as part of a mock science experiment to study visible stars, treating them as an endangered species. During the festival, astronomers came by nightly to take counts of stars and visitors could record counts themselves. Additional information about light pollution was available from free tear-away posters attached to the devices.
ARTIST JAIME RUSSOM: PINHOLE PHOTOGRAPHY
At the November 11, 2016 JT Lab Artists' Tea, artist Jaime Russom discussed her explorations of photography using a pinhole camera. She created a pinhole camera from within the boulders at Cap Rock and created this image by exposing photo-sensitive paper on site, then developing the image in the dark room.
TIPPLE TIME
Silver Bell Mine is an historic site within Joshua Tree National Park. Two notable structures remain from its heyday as an operational mine: large heavy timber ore bins, or "tipples". The timbers at the base of both were experiencing rot and required replacement. Materials were helicoptered into wilderness, where the tipples were raised up on jacks, squared, and the timbers replaced with new wood wherever necessary. Efforts were made to retain as much original material as possible, including historic hardware.
JT Lab was asked to document the process of the Silver Bell Mine reconstruction. In doing so, three types of photos were captured: Documentary photographs intended primarily for park reference, Interpretive photographs that tell the story of the preservation work, and Fine Art photographs that tell a more fundamental conceptual story of time exploring relationships between new and old, technology, weathering and change.