To Dance On Sands [Hardcover]

About Marta Becket . . . Tears came to my eyes. Marta represented to me the spirit of the individual. The spirit of the theater. The spirit of creativity. -Ray Bradbury, Author Marta's paintings have a degree of humor and playfulness. The use of color is outstanding and tell of a generosity, talent and skill. -Red Skelton, Comedian/Artist Long before anybody invented the term performance art, Marta Becket was doing it, in an abandoned opera house in Death Valley Junction. She restored it and it restored her. With serene tenacity, she set down roots, working hard for decades, caring as well for endangered animals, including wild burros, until the world began coming to her. -Boston Globe Becket's saga epitomizes the eternal struggle of the artist for personal expression. - Chicago Tribune The forthright artist went on with what essentially was her own private show. She choreographed and performed her own dances, at first to an audience of tumbleweeds. But over the course of years, she painstakingly developed another audience - the Renaissance-looking crowd she painted in elaborate murals to fill her Amargosa Opera House with gawking spectators. Eventually Becket was discovered by living audiences, mostly appreciators of art, who have gone to great lengths to see her work. Becket overcame much and worked hard to get where she is today, a relatively unknown artist in the middle of nowhere. But she loves her unique place in the world. -San Francisco Chronicle If this were fiction - if Marta Becket were not a real person - then the whole oddball-in-the-desert scenario might seem like something dreamed up by David Lynch. Or Sam Shepard. But Becket is very much the real thing, and she has made quite a name for herself out there in the desert. -Northern California Bohemian On stage there is a warble to her voice. She is thin, but her expressions are as varied and fluid as shifting sand dunes. To say that Becket was beautiful when she was young, as evidenced by pl3+