Marfa, Texas

 An Odd Little Artsy Town in the Middle of Nowhere

Marfa is south of Interstate 10, in west Texas.  If you look at a map, to be south of I-10 in west Texas means being pretty much nowhere.  And yet, Marfa, Texas, has been written up in Vogue, which called it magical and mystical, which I think was stretching the adjectives a bit.  

I’d known that Marfa was designated “artsy” (though not the about Vogue write-up), and on my previous stay at Davis Mountain, I’d driven through Marfa in a fruitless endeavor to discover its artistic character.  It just looked like another dusty west Texas town, plunked down in the midst of the vastness of the land that stretches from the Canadian border to Mexico.  Nothing there….

Then, recently, I read a whodunit by John Sandford (yes, I consume large quantities of trashy whodunits):  Golden Prey.  The finale shoot-em-up, wherein the bad guys die in a blaze of gunfire, was set in Marfa.  In fact, that final, climactic scene where everything goes to hell, took place in and around the reason for Marfa’s claim to artistic fame:  the hangar museum that displays the modernist/minimalist/something works of Donald Judd:  The Chinati Foundation.

Obviously, learning about the work of Judd through a whodunit is indicative of my lack of culture.  Oh well.

So, to Marfa I came, to see art, to become one with Vogue culture.  And here is where I stayed:

Not here, at the beautiful Paisano Hotel, where Liz and Rock and James Dean had lounged (and maybe loved) while making Giant, one of the many films made in Marfa:

No, here, surrounded by the vastness of west Texas. 

Not here, with the lovely bathroom, fireplace, and tile floors:

That’s OK.  I had this beautiful sunrise.

Artsy Marfa

After a stop at a most excellent local historical museum, I ventured into an artier venue:  The Chinati Foundation.  I won’t burden you with the whole story, but, basically, New York weary Donald Judd stumbled over Marfa and its defunct military base; he bought the latter, which had sufficient indoor and outdoor space to house his ….large….concrete ...... pieces.  I did not wish to pay to see the pieces in the hangar, but here are those outdoors, scattered like the toys of giants over about  1/3 mile.

 

Yup.  Not portable. At all.    And so I moved on to Silver City, NM.