Cave Creek

Iron oxide gives the rocks of Arizona their distinctive red coloring. Alongside copper, gold, and other minerals, these natural resources drew prospectors to the northern Phoenix region in the late 1800s. This art program takes inspiration from the materials, textures, and visual language of Cave Creek and the surrounding Sonoran Desert.

The collection combines handcrafted ceramics, woven textiles, desert photography, vintage ephemera, and graphic studies to create a tactile connection to place. In a first for the studio, we worked with a philatelist to source groupings of 1942 Desert Cactus Plants stamps and 1962 Arizona Statehood stamps, which were assembled into custom collages for the mailroom and circulation spaces.

Ceramics became a central material language throughout the project — from custom clay vessels at the entry to sculptural wall-mounted disks and folded ceramic extrusions that reference the texture and movement of the desert landscape. Prospective residents are welcomed by custom textiles with integrated copper wire, alongside a collage of vintage US Geological Survey maps framed to echo the silhouette of the state itself.