As much as he doesn’t like to draw attention to himself and his achievements, Andy Woods, the Wonder Valley wonder, has taken the Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council to a better, wider reaching, more organized and professional level in the 3 years he has been director.

Coming from Los Angeles after running a pop culture shop that sold animation stills, art and music memorabilia, he moved here 6 years ago, “still letting LA out of my system. I needed to slow down a bit, and I found this to be such an inspiring place. I moved to Wonder Valley with my partner and spent a lot of down time. There was no obvious art scene that we knew about, but we met artists at The Palms and soon started Wonder Valley Arts group. But then I heard about the Morongo Basin group where artists were meeting at people’s homes. They had no office at the time when I started volunteering, and soon the board was dissipating, so I took over as Art Tours director 3 years ago.”

Andy has recently opened Woods in the Desert, his own art gallery in Joshua Tree.