While touring the regional circuit in the early 1960s performing with her own repertoire, Becket also managed to secure an art gallery in NYC where she began to sell her figurative paintings of whimsical New York City street scenes - city parks, costume shops, circuses populated with a variety of theatrical and stylized children, shop keepers, carnies and even "bored" fortune tellers. "The Kite Flyer," one of Marta Becket's earlier paintings recently sold on auction. Many have traveled to this remote corner at the eastern edge of Death Valley National Park to catch a fleeting glimpse of Becket's desert legacy in art, music and dance - now continued through the efforts of a young but retired Bay-area ballerina who was originally inspired to take up dance when she first witnessed Becket on stage at six years of age. Her legendary story is not only the subject of the Emmy-winning documentary " Amargosa" (2000), but one that fans from across the globe have sought out here in the desert for years now. This led the multi-talented doyenne to resurrect and transform Death Valley Junction's decaying community meeting hall into a gloriously muraled theater where for four decades she has performed her own choreographed ballet and vaudeville acts for an international audience. "A fortuitous flat tire" came after a fortune teller's prophecy that suggested the letter A loomed large on Marta Becket's personal horizon. The Mojave Project reconsiders and establishes multiple ways in which to interpret this unique and complex landscape, through association and connection of seemingly unrelated sites, themes, and subjects thus creating a speculative and immersive experience for its audience. The Mojave Project is an experimental transmedia documentary by Kim Stringfellow exploring the physical, geological and cultural landscape of the Mojave Desert. | Photo: Vernon Merritt for Life Magazine. Marta Becket photographed on the Amargosa Opera House stage for LIFE Magazine.
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