Populuxe

Tina Farrow was born in Roswell, New Mexico, twenty-three years after something — or someone — left a mark on the desert floor that the town never quite recovered from. She grew up with that mythology woven into her name, her identity, and eventually her art. This sculpture feels like the artifact of that origin: a signal tower broadcasting from the atomic age into the present, built by an artist who has never stopped experimenting, never stopped watching the sky. The totem rises from a circular blue base — a planet, a stage, a launchpad — and climbs through a language of shapes that Roswell has spent a lifetime collecting: the geometric cutouts of mid-century architecture, the stacked triangles of Googie roadside signage, the concentric ovals of Eames textile patterns, and finally the four-pointed starburst at the crown, crowned with chrome orbs that catch the Nevada sun like tiny moons. The coral and magenta push against the deep black silhouette the way neon pushes against a desert night sky — joyful, relentless, impossible to ignore. This piece was built for the Las Vegas life Roswell and her husband Robb Rocket chose together — a city that understands the power of a bold vertical statement, that has always known how to make light and shape feel like a promise. Standing before it, you feel what she feels every time she steps into her studio: that curiosity, that pull toward the unknown, that alien sense that the best experiment is always the next one.