Rising Stars: Meet John Henson

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Henson.

Hi John, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
For most of my professional life, I worked at UCLA presenting concerts and producing large-scale events. Art was always something I appreciated, but I never really imagined that I would become an artist myself.
That began to change when my wife and I started spending time in the Hi-Desert. In 2010, I attended the Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours for the first time. There was something special about driving through the desert, going directly into artists’ studios, seeing where the work was made and talking with the artists themselves. It really stayed with me. It made art feel less remote and more possible.
Before long, I began making my own work and eventually became a participating artist in the Art Tours. I create large-scale images using thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, of individual nails. Over the years, the Hi-Desert gradually became an increasingly important part of both my life and my art practice.
A few years ago, I found myself coming full circle when I was asked to direct the Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours. The skills I had developed producing events at UCLA suddenly became useful again, but in a completely different setting and for a community I had come to care deeply about.
This year’s tour, taking place the first 3 weekends in October, is especially meaningful because 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the Art Tours. What began in 2001 with just over 20 artists has grown into an event featuring more than 220 artists at 141 studio locations over three weekends in October, stretching across the gateway communities surrounding Joshua Tree National Park. Today, it is the largest open studio event in Southern California.
I sometimes think that if I hadn’t walked into those artists’ studios back in 2010, my own life might have taken a very different path.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Anything that grows from a small grassroots event into something this large is going to experience growing pains.
One of the challenges of the Art Tours is that it still has the spirit of a community-run event, but today it operates on the scale of a major regional arts event. We’re coordinating hundreds of artists, 12,000 printed catalogs with maps, an app, a website, a collective gallery show and a large team of staff and volunteers, all across an enormous geographic area.
At the same time, we’ve worked very hard not to lose what made the event special in the first place. The Art Tours are not meant to feel like a conventional art fair. Visitors travel along rural desert roads, finding studios tucked into neighborhoods and desert landscapes, meeting artists in the places where they actually work and live, and seeing everything from painting and sculpture to ceramics, photography, assemblage, textiles and experimental work.
The challenge has been to build the infrastructure needed for an event of this size without making it feel overly institutional.
There are practical challenges, too: rising production and marketing costs, keeping information accurate for hundreds of participants and making the experience easy to navigate for visitors who may be coming to the desert for the first time.
But the growth has also been enormously rewarding. Thousands of people now attend, and last year participating artists collectively sold more than half a million dollars of artwork directly to visitors. For an event built around artists opening their own doors to the public, that is something I’m particularly proud of.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My own work is probably easiest to describe as image-making with nails. I create portraits, desert imagery and pieces involving music and popular culture by driving thousands of nails into painted wood panels, using either a hammer or a nail gun. Depending on the piece, I may use anywhere from a few hundred to as many as 60,000 nails.
From a distance, the individual nails merge visually and the image becomes clear. Up close, the image begins to disappear and you become aware of the nail heads themselves. I’m interested in that tension between something so ordinary and industrial — a nail — and an image that can feel detailed, emotional or even delicate.
What I’m most proud of is that the work has developed its own visual language. People often recognize one of my pieces before they know I made it. There are many artists working with unconventional materials, but I think the combination of scale, density, photographic detail and the sheer physicality of tens of thousands of nails gives the work a character that is distinctly mine.
And in an odd way, the Art Tours are responsible for all of it. I first came to the event as a visitor, later opened my own studio as a participating artist and eventually became the person helping organize the entire tour. That progression still feels remarkable to me.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
My father was a tinkerer and had a workshop in our garage. I have wonderful memories of watching him with a kind of wonder as he figured out how to build and repair things with a simple set of tools.
I specifically remember the thrill of learning the seemingly simple task of driving a nail into a piece of wood with a hammer. It was actually quite a challenge when he first introduced me to it, but I still remember the satisfaction when I finally got the hang of it.
Years later, I had a very similar moment teaching my own son how to use a hammer and nail. At the time, of course, I had no idea that later in life I would begin pounding thousands of nails into large wood panels to create artwork.
Looking back now, I love that connection. Something I first experienced as a child in my father’s workshop eventually became one of the fundamental tools of my own art practice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hwy62arttours.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hwy62arttours
• Other: https://johnhensonart.com