JAMES PERKINS CREATES SITE-SPECIFIC LAND ART IN ARIZONA AHEAD OF EXHIBITION AT SMOCA
On View September 2025 - February 2026
Ahead of his solo show at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) in the Fall of 2025, Perkins headed to the Cattle Track Arts Compound to create a site-specific post-totem structure arranged by show curator Lauren R. O’Connell. During his one-week residency, Perkins replaced his Fire Island beach studio with the Sonoran Desert’s blazing sun, dry winds, rough brush, and curious coyotes. After surviving seven months in the desert, Perkins will harvest the sculptures and finish the works as nonsites to present them in the exhibition along with other works.
Cattle Track Arts Compound is a historic arts community known for its national and local designations. Originating as a homestead in 1937, Cattle Track Arts is now one of Scottsdale’s longest-functioning artist communities, founded by George and Rachael Ellis. The original homestead occupied a strip of undeveloped land next to an unlined pioneer irrigation ditch (Arizona Canal) in the vast, unpopulated desert. The area had earned the moniker “cattletrack” from the cowboys driving their cattle along the canal to auction houses and feedlots. Over the years, George, an engineer, built several adobe and wood houses on the property, many still in use today. Rachael, a schoolteacher and equestrian, became a well-known fashion designer in Scottsdale. In the 1950s, the homestead became a meeting place for creatives to socialize with fellow artists, writers, musicians, and politicians, such as Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Both local and visiting artists populated the various dwellings throughout the years, including New York sculptor Louise Nevelson and Arizona painter Dorothy Fratt. Jean Lipman, author and longtime editor of Art in America Magazine, frequented Cattle Track after moving to Arizona in the early 1970s. Today, George and Rachael’s daughter Janie Ellis, a former Balanchine ballerina and choreographer, manages the 11-acre compound, which includes a gallery and 35 artist studios.