Meet the Makers: The Artists Behind JT Trading Post
Walk into JT Trading Post and you're not just walking into a store. You're walking into the work of over 47 local vendors — people who live out here, make things out here, and chose to put their work into the world through this space. It matters. Especially right now, when small businesses need the support more than most people realize.
This is the first in a series of posts introducing you to the makers behind the shelves. Today we're starting with the artists — the people whose work lives on your walls, your shelves, and your desk long after you leave the desert.
Amber Morgan — Illustrator and Muralist
Amber Morgan is an illustrator and muralist whose work is rooted in the landscapes of the American West. Her prints capture the high desert in a way that feels both precise and emotional — the silhouette of a Joshua tree at dusk, the warm geometry of desert light, the specific quiet of a place that doesn't need explaining. Her stickers and art prints are some of the most reached-for pieces in the shop. If you've seen a mural in the high desert that stopped you in your tracks, there's a good chance Amber had something to do with it.
Her work is available at JT Trading Post in store and online at jttradingpost.com.
Doug Beale — Kreaturetown
Doug Beale is the artist behind Kreaturetown — a whimsical, hand-cut world of stickers, postcards, and paper art full of characters that feel like they belong in the desert. Doug's work has a specific kind of playfulness that doesn't try too hard — the creatures are weird, warm, and strangely familiar. The kind of art that makes you smile before you've fully processed what you're looking at. His stickers end up on water bottles, laptops, and skateboard decks. His postcards get sent to people who matter. His hand-cut paper pieces are the kind of thing you frame.
Kreaturetown is available at JT Trading Post — come find it in person for the best selection.
Linda Shrader — Joshua Tree Forever Sculptures
Linda Shrader is a local artist whose work is shaped by years of hiking the high desert, watching the light shift across the land, and paying close attention to the small, powerful details that make Joshua Tree what it is. That connection shows up most clearly in her Joshua Tree Forever sculptures — three-dimensional pieces that let visitors take home something lasting. Not a souvenir in the gift shop sense. A reminder. Something you put on a shelf and look at years from now and feel the exact temperature of a particular afternoon in the desert.
Linda's sculptures are available exclusively at JT Trading Post.
Tayler Straziuso — Stray Ceramics
Tayler Straziuso is the maker behind Stray Ceramics — handmade ceramic pieces that carry the quiet, textured energy of the high desert in every piece she makes. Ceramics done well have a specific kind of presence — something about the weight of them, the way they hold warmth, the feeling that a person's hands were involved at every stage. That's what Stray Ceramics delivers. Functional pieces that feel like art. Art pieces that feel like they belong in a real home, on a real table, in a real life.
Tayler's work is available at JT Trading Post in store — come find it in person and take something handmade home.
Why It Matters
Every piece you buy from these artists is a direct investment in a person who chose to make a life out here. No algorithm, no factory, no middleman. You buy it, they keep making things. That's how the creative community of Joshua Tree stays what it is.
Come find us and meet the work in person. We're open seven days a week — weekdays noon to 5, weekends 9 to 5. And if you can't make it out to the desert right now, you can shop every vendor in our collective online — browse the full lineup at jttradingpost.com/collections and find the maker whose work speaks to you.
