“It looks like the unlicensed pot farms have ceased operations.” Daniel Hawkins is surveying the Mojave Desert landscape surrounding the hill on which he built a fully functioning 50-foot solar-powered lighthouse in 2017. Below us, an elaborate compound of white tents has begun to disintegrate. “There’s another over that hill, but it’s gone too. Maybe the sheriff came by.”

It’s a relief on several counts—for one thing, the pictorial aspect of Hawkins’ Land Art installation will return to its Minimalist default—with the remains of the town of Hinkley (think Erin Brokovich) the only filigree on the horizon. Secondly, reports of ominous dark-tinted high-end off-road vehicles monitoring the activities of Desert Lighthouse pilgrims have pretty much evaporated. 

Still, it’s just another aspect of the peculiar theatrical narrative layer the DL has generated over its first five years. Several vloggers specializing in oddball travel adventures have stumbled on the site—“Death Valley–based adventuress and explorer” Wonderhussy is a standout. “The beacon from this lighthouse,” she observes in her YouTube critique “made me feel weirdly safe.” Other locals have developed theories ranging from UFO landing pad signal to PG&E toxic groundwater plume warning to secret government marker of where the post-apocalypse coastline will be.

Desert Lighthouse at night, 2017

A poignant memorial to a local young woman popped up at one point and is still occasionally maintained. “I guess she used to just like hanging out here,” says Hawkins, “and when she died, her church wanted to do something special.” The nearby Fort Irwin military training center strangely recommends a trip to the DL as an edifying use for soldiers’ free time. Then there’s the Stargate Hinkley group, who seem to sincerely believe that ancient astronauts left the lighthouse as a calling card in the long-ago pre-COVID times. About the only crackpot community that hasn’t noticed the Desert Lighthouse is the mainstream art world.

That could all change in October, when PRJCTLA hosts “Desert Lighthouse: V,” the latest in a series of DL-themed solo shows that include Hawkins’ MFA thesis show at UC Irvine, and a spectacular museum-scaled show at the UC Riverside Culver Center for the Arts. But DL:V is the first show since the lighthouse was actually erected. Hawkins, a quintessential postmodern multimedia artist, will include sculptures, paintings, photographs, film and video, etchings, holograms, modified lighthouse detritus, and two publications—one, a catalog of the show; the other a compendium of the byzantine paperwork that had to be completed to make the lighthouse happen. Oh, and possibly some chartered bus trips from Downtown LA out to the Hinkley site.

“I have to repair all these missing panels first,” says Hawkins, squinting up at the towering steel and plastic edifice, “and make sure the fresnel’s [an led lens] working properly.” With his longish hair, glasses and survivalist desert clothes, Hawkins can resemble a central casting rendition of a ’70s land artist, albeit one who has invested money, energy and more than a decade of his life into the realization of an image that came to him in the middle of an agoraphobic panic attack while speeding through the trackless void of the I-15 outside Barstow. “If only there was a lighthouse!” he thought. The rest is history.

Makeshift memorial created by visitors at the Desert Lighthouse, 2019

Not that Hawkins hasn’t been working on other projects. Since completing the lighthouse, he’s produced public sculptures, experimental music and films—while incrementally whittling away at several major works. There’s the long-gestated piecemeal actual-size replica of the Hoover Dam. Then there’s the Radical Mountain project, which sometimes manifests as an exercise in sociological esthetics—basically starting a cult to man an expedition to scale a topographically flat mountain somewhere in Nevada. 

At other times Radical Mountain is identified as a fictional mountain-climbing adventure movie—with a seemingly endless proliferation of spinoffs, including a quasi-documentary detailing Hawkins’ extended, absurdist campaign to get actor Val Kilmer involved in the project. In his spare time, he’s collaborated with LA artist Marnie Weber on her last several film projects, and curated her recent survey “Unreal Paradise: Collage Works from 1992 to 2022.”

All the while he’s kept the Desert Lighthouse burning. As the high desert wind picks up and the sun sinks below the richly mottled horizon, he takes a last look around. He’ll be returning over the summer, braving the 120ish temperatures to get the lighthouse back in pristine condition. “I’d be really happy to get some kind of art institutional recognition for the Desert Lighthouse,” he admits, “But the really important thing is that Wonderhussy feels safe.” 

Desert Lighthouse: V

PRJCTLA 

Oct. 1–Nov. 5, 2022

Opening reception: Sat., Oct. 1, 3–6 pm

Photos by Daniel Hawkins