Erika Blumenfeld at HWY 90 Gallery

Santa Fe-based artist Erika Blumenfeld returns to Marfa this fall with a solo show at HWY 90 Gallery. Blumenfeld will be exhibiting recent works from her Light Recording series, in which she documents light phenomena over time onto photosensitive materials. A reception for Blumenfeld and other HWY 90 Gallery artists will kick off the exhibit on Thursday, October 5.

Blumenfeld’s exhibition, titled Light & Time, will include a large-scale photographic installation of a full moon lunar eclipse and several pieces from her Fractions of Light & Time series, which were recorded here in Marfa this past spring. Also included is a video installation, titled Moving Light: Spring 2005, which documents the increasing duration of sunlight as the sun moves from the equinox to the solstice during northern spring.

Marfa residents may remember Blumenfeld’s exhibition Lunation 1011, which was on view in January 2005 at Ballroom. Blumenfeld was Ballroom’s inaugural artist-in-residence in the fall of 2004, during which time the artist had the rare opportunity of creating a video work at the McDonald Observatory by recorded moonlight through an altered telescope over a period of a lunar month.

Blumenfeld’s work is inspired by her interest in the nature of light. “I attempt to document the various manifestations of light we experience every day: dawn, twilight, midnight, midday, the solstices and equinoxes, the full moon phases. My intention is to catalogue the actions and intensities of light over time, and visually describe astronomical cycles that occur throughout our year.” Instead of a traditional camera and lens, Blumenfeld builds special light-recording equipment that allows light to directly travel across the surface of the photographic film and paper or digital media. The resulting images are recordings of the subtle gradient shifts that light makes over time – visual records of light’s trace.

Blumenfeld’s work has been included in exhibits at numerous galleries and museums, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe; DiverseWorks Art Space in Houston; Galerie der Stadt Mainz-Brurm, Mainz, Germany; and Kunstmernes Hus, Oslo, Norway.

Also on view will be works by Jenny Bloomfield and Mel Lyons, both based in the San Francisco area, collages by Lance Letscher of Austin, and paintings on Mylar by Brooklyn artist Tad Wiley.

Joan Winter, of Dallas, will show her “Marfa Series” etchings and Alpine printmaker Alan Vannoy will display Xerox transfer prints. Also on display will be drawings by Marfa artist Gretchen Lee Coles from her “Field Notes” series. Ft. Worth artist Keith Lymon, whose studio is currently located in Marfa, will show new work, as will New York-based artist Matthew Riva and Houston artist John Adelman.

The reception on October 5 will be from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibit will be on display at the gallery through November 25. HWY 90 Gallery is located in Marfa across the street from Donald Judd’s private residence and studios (commonly called the Block).

The Marfa.Org ®@ŋd¤m‡zЄ®

The musical act this year is/are The Dandy Warhols. If you aren't already a big fan, you have about 9 days to fall in love with them before the show (we know you will.) Here are a few smokin' tunes that you can download to your road trip soundtrack. Right click, and chose "save target as".



- Horny As A Dandy.mp3
- Intergalactic Friends (Ultra 396).mp3 [editor's choice]
- We Used To Be Friends, Live on KNRK.mp3
The show is Saturday night, 10pm at the Ice Plant.

In West Texas You Take Care of Your Own
In Presidio County, you’re a long way from anywhere.
The vistas are grand; the frontier is staggering in its raw, volcanic beauty. What does that mean, though, when your child has an asthma attack, or your husband suffers chest pains? How far is too far when it comes to medical care?...

Chinati Open House 2006 Synopsis at Chinati.org
1916 Original Photo Postcard of Courthouse
House For Rent Auction Re-listed on eBay
1/1,000,000th Acres of Marfa Land
Marfa Weather Forecast

Something Seems Fishy...

While shopping for internationally aclaimed works of art online, as I usually do, I came accross what appears to be an original aluminum box from Marfa! Holy smokes! And it's a steal at 50 bucks... but wait, something about that craftsmaship seems a bit fishy.

Original Aluminum Box, Marfa Art Landscape
"...you're back home by Monday and now you're totally depressed... in only a few days, your Ebay item will arrive and perk you up to the highest peaks!! Aluminum (Foil) Box in the desert. A genius idea from the mind of a true genius. Who would ever have thought to combine an aluminum (foil) box with the stunning landscape of West Texas. I am practically moved to tears just writing the description..."

The aluminum box auction is here, and another, slightly more snide auction, by the same seller/author is here.

Robert Irwin, A Brief Biography

Robert Irwin has been one of the pivotal artists in American Art for more than 30 years both as a practitioner and a theoretician. Irwin began his career as an abstract expressionist; however, by the late 1960's he had moved away from painting to become one of the creators of the art of light and space, using ephemeral materials such as scrim, lighting and orientation to alter and heighten the viewers perception of the space in which they encountered his work. Since the early 80's Irwin has won an international reputation for his "site-generated" work in public spaces which often make intimate use of natural elements, plantings and topographic features.

In the book Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, author Lawrence Weschler relates Irwin’s development from his early days as a young artist in southern California to his emergence as a leader in the post-abstraction art world. Weschler describes the mystifying and often enchanting quality of these works in his book:
In May 1980, Robert Irwin returned to Market Street in Venice, California to the block where he’d kept a studio until 1970, the year he abandoned studio work altogether. Melinda Wyatt was opening a gallery in the building next door to his former work space and invited Irwin to create an installation. He cleaned out the large rectangular room, adjusted the skylights, painted the walls an even white, and then knocked out the wall facing the street, replacing it with a sheer, semi-transparent white scrim. The room seemed to change its aspect with the passing day: people came and sat on the opposite curb, watching, sometimes for hours at time. The piece was up for two weeks in one of the more derelict beachfront neighborhoods of Los Angeles: no one so much as laid a hand on it.

Robert Irwin was born in 1928 and grew up in Los Angeles, where he attended Dorsey High School. He received his art education at Otis Art Institute, Jepsons Art Institute and Chouinards Art Institute (1948-1954). Later, Mr. Irwin taught at Chouinards (1957-58), University of California, Los Angeles (1962), and in 1968-69, he developed the graduate program at the University of California, Irvine.

Beginning in 1970 (with the end of his practice as a studio artist), Irwin's method of teaching became exclusively in response, developing a peripatetic form of accepting invitations to lecture or participate in seminars and symposia in the art, architecture, philosophy and perceptual psychology departments of over 150 universities in 46 states. Along the way Robert Irwin has been the John J. Hill professor at the University of Minnesota (1981); the J. Paul Getty lecturer at the University of Southern California (1986); the Cullinan professor at Rice University (1987-88); the Andrew Ritchie lecturer at Yale University (1988); and the Yaseen lecturer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1990).

In the early years following art school (1958-68) Irwin practiced as a painter, a period marked by a series of radical reductions in the "highly stylized learned logic of pictorial reality." Today these paintings are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1970 Irwin broke with painting and embarked on an extended inquiry of an art outside the traditional frame and object; working by invitation in existing spaces, Irwin created a series of ephemeral interventions now referred to as the distinctly west coast art of light and space.

















Two Running Violet V Forms, Robert Irwin, UC San Diego, photo CC by Ken McCown

"My art has never been about ideas… My interest in art has never been about abstraction; it has always been about experience… My pieces were never meant to be dealt with intellectually as ideas, but to be considered experientially." -Robert Irwin, Reshaping the Shape of Things

These works were created in such places as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and The Pace Gallery, New York. A facet of this work continues to be present with more recent installations (1994-95) at the Musée d' Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris; Kölinscher Kunstverein, Cologne; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Since the 1980's Irwin's continued questioning for the "pure subject of art" has carried him to an inquiry of the actual role of art in the light of a radical "modern" art history. This exploration has resulted in "real" world "site-generated-conditional art" proposals and projects in public places such as the Old Post Office Atrium, Washington, D.C.; Stuart Collection, University of California, San Diego; a case study Arts Enrichment Master Plan; Miami International Airport; and the Central Gardens of the new J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles.

Among the writings and books Mr. Irwin has published are: Rober Irwin Notes towards A model (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1977); Being and Circumstance: Notes Toward a Conditional Art (Lapis Press, San Francisco, 1985); The Hidden Structures of Art (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Rozzoli International Publications, New York, 1993). A biography Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees By Lawrence Weschler was published by the University of California Press in 1982.Robert Irwin has received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship Award along the way.

Books by and about Robert Irwin can be purchased at the Marfa Book Co., 432.729.3906.

Trend Watch: Move Out of Your House for the Weekend

House Rental in Marfa, Tx for Chinati Weekend
There's another Marfan this year willing to give up house and home for the Chinati weekend... if the price is right. Last year was the first time, to our knowledge, that a resident posted their house for rent on the popular auction site eBay. This year, one can rent this nice little 2 bedroom, 2 bath home from Friday through Monday. The bidding starts at a clean grand, and auction is scheduled to end this Tuesday around 11 pm.

[Update: The first auction ended with no bids, but the house has been relisted. This acution ends October 4th at around 10 am. Click here to check it out.]

Gearing Up for Open House Weekend 2006

Looks like Marfa fever is setting in. We've noticed a sharp increase of eyeballs here at Marfa.Org. Usually we have about 120 visitors a day, but these days we are recording over 3 times that.

The anticipation for this year's event is palatable; there is a buzz in the air (or is that a buzz saw?) Everyone is scurrying to get ready for the annual onslaught of art pilgrims. The folks over at El Cosmico are building a stage and installing their dutchtubs, and can be seen around town in a big truck that has "Follow me to El Cosmico" painted on it.

Unfortunately, this year The Pizza Foundation will be closed for the weekend due to staffing shortages and insufficient infrastructure. This is unwelcome news for the arriving masses because Marfa's meager food offerings already get overwhelmed every Open House weekend. This news will take us back a few years; we'll be lunchin' at the DQ like the good ole days. Rather than close entirely, I suggested that The Pizza Foundation run a stripped-down operation this year - nothing but cheese slices and ice tea, but this doesn't get to the heart of the problem. You may remember last year that many areas of town had "issues" with the sewage system - that's right, the downtown businesses like Paisano, Pizza Foundation, possibly Maiya's and many others are all sharing an inadequate undersized sewer line that basically prevents PF from running their kitchen at full steam.

One welcome addition to the culinary options is the Food Shark, a roaming cuisine machine. (Is it true that the shark used to be a Mrs. Baird's truck?) The food's great and the attire is come-as-you-are. This year I hear they will be debuting the special Marfalafel, sure to match the success of food invention predecessors, the corn dog (Texas State Fair, 1941) and the hamburger (Erie County Fair & Expo, 1885). Here's a photo of the Shark from February. (Yes that's Ben from the Secret Machines having a torta.)

Another less obvious food choice, for those of you that don't know, is the Burrito Lady. She serves traditional Mexican burritos out of her house(?) on south Highway 67.

2006 Chinati Open House Artists

The Dandy Warhols concert will be at the Ice Plant at 10:00 pm Saturday night.

The Marfa.Org ®@ŋd¤m‡zЄ®

MacArthur Grant Recipient Gets News While In Marfa
Gas Co. Surplus To Go Back To Customers or to City?
The Civilian Conservation Corps and Indian Lodge
Pass Properties, Marfa Real Estate
Ballroom Marfa has an Online Store
40 Acres For Sale on eBay, SW of Marfa
Envelope from Marfa to El Paso, 1888 (Humphris & Co.)
Art Class Info at Marfa Studio of Arts
Music by Texas Artists at Marfa Book Co. Store

The Open House Weekend Carpool Thread

Arranging a ride to and from Marfa for the Chinati Open House weekend is easier said than done for many. Every year we hear about someone looking for a ride from Houston, the El Paso or Midland airport, Alpine or wherever. So, a reader (thanks Dan) suggested this topic last year and it turned out to be a helpful space to set up shared rides. So anyone needing a ride (or looking to share their ride) can arrange it here at Marfa.Org. Simply click on "comments" below and post your needs. I suggest that you list the basics (when, where, how many, etc.) and the endless favors you'll do.

The Marfa.Org ®@ŋd¤m‡zЄ®

Bell in West Texas Hunting for Votes
La Entrada Planners Watch Mexican Pres. Race
El Cosmico Groundbreaking Party, Sept. 22
Christie's Catalogue, Donald Judd Collection
Dan Flavin Lithograph, Hommage a Picasso
Random Judd Pictures at Google Images

Donna Karan Offers 'Drive-In' Fashion
"Donna Karan is doing what she can to steer people toward the drive-in -- but not just any old drive-in. The Ballroom Drive-In, the outdoor theater being built by the nonprofit Ballroom Marfa at its contemporary art and culture center in Marfa, Texas, will be the beneficiary when the designer hosts a night of shopping Sept. 19 at her collection store at 819 Madison Ave.
A percentage of the proceeds will be used for the theater that is being designed by up-and-coming architect Ole Scheeren, a partner in Rem Koolhaas Architecture Firm. The Museum of Modern Art's Tina di Carlo and Josh Siegel will serve as guest curators. Siegel unintentionally set the wheels in motion for the project during a visit to the Texas art mecca.
Over drinks one night with Ballroom Marfa's Fairfax Dorn, he wondered aloud why Marfa doesn't have a drive-in. Now Dorn is busy trying to raise between $500,000 and $1 million to make that happen before the planned Memorial Day weekend opening."

Reception Tonight at HWY90 for Coles Show

A striking ceramic sculpture installation and large graphite drawings by artist/cartographer Gretchen Lee Coles bring the technical process of mapping to life in a new way. The works will be shown at HWY 90 Gallery in September, launched by a reception at the gallery tonight, September 8.

Coles, who moved to Marfa from Chicago in 2003, has a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and a Master of Arts degree in cartography. “I always wanted to know the mapping process and bring that into my sculpture studio,” said Coles. “Eventually I learned enough about the mapping process that I now use it intuitively in my art.”

The works to be displayed at HWY 90 Gallery are directly derived from maps and the mapping process. On maps, lines represent various linear and nonlinear bits of geographic information, such as boundaries, grids, and waterways. The sculpture installation, titled “Line Up,” comprises numerous individual linear reliefs that represent the graphic elements of maps in three-dimensional, sculptural form.

The exhibit will also include large graphite drawings on Mylar. “The drawings document my feelings about the atmosphere during my field observations in and around Marfa while mentally mapping the area in which I move,” said Coles. The drawings are the artistic equivalent of the field book of measurements, notes, and drawings kept by the leaders of survey crews. Field books often contain intimate observations about the plants, animals, waterways, land forms and atmosphere at the time the landscape is being measured.

The reception on September 8 (tonight) will be from 5 to 8 p.m. The exhibit will be on display at the gallery through September 30. HWY 90 Gallery is located in Marfa across the street from Donald Judd’s private residence and studios (commonly called the Block). More information can be found at http://www.hwy90gallery.com/.

Alumni Envision Blackwell School as Community Center

Old Adobe Could Become Museum and Park

The wonderful old adobe structure at the corner of Waco Street and Abbot Street may have a future beyond the Marfa Independent School District's junkyard. The Blackwell School has been inactive for over 40 years, since the end of segregation in Marfa's public schools. What remains today is a handsome white-stuccoed adobe on a half city block. If you've ever walked from the center of town to Chinati, undoubtedly you've noticed this diamond-in-the-rough. If a dedicated group of Blackwell's alums has its way, this wonderful potential will be realized through the development of a museum, public meeting room, and most notably, a public park.

Link to an aerial photo/ map here.
Sterry Butcher has written a nice article for the Sentinel here.

"A group of Blackwell School alumni wants to re-open their alma mater as a museum, community classroom and park. There’s not much more than cobwebs, ghosts and heaps of dusty junk at Blackwell these days. From 1889 until it closed in 1965, Blackwell was the segregated school for Marfa’s Hispanic children. Hundreds of Marfans went there for their kindergarten through eighth grade years... Some of Blackwell’s buildings were torn down for the construction of the Marfa Housing Authority, and those that remain have become storage buildings for the Marfa ISD. Joe Cabezuela, Blackwell graduate from 1960, would like to revive the spirit of the place. “We want to see if we can have it and refurbish it,” he explained this week... Representatives from the Blackwell exes group made a brief appearance at a recent school board meeting to broach their ideas. They’ll have a more in-depth conversation with district trustees at a September meeting. They’d like to own the property outright, but barring that possibility, the group would like to work out some kind of use arrangement with the district...." full article

There is a discussion thread here.

El Cosmico: Trans-Pecos Kibbutz

El Cosmico is the latest lodging concept from Liz Lambert and her management company, Bunkhouse. Lambert is the creative force behind the popular Hotel San Jose in Austin, as well as the city's landmark coffeehouse, Jo's Hot Coffee. Lambert's first project in Marfa, the Thunderbird Hotel, met with critical acclaim, not only for its clean, crisp aesthetic, but also for its respect for the austere West Texas landscape. Lambert has moved on, ending her business relationship with the Thunderbird Hotel in the fall of 2005. Lambert's work has been featured in numerous magazines, newsweeklies, design books and travel shows.

"El Cosmico will be a Trans-Pecos kibbutz for the 21st century - part yurt and hammock hotel, part residential living, part art-house, greenhouse, amphitheatre and farmer's market - a community space that fosters artistic and intellectual exchange."

Lambert is working with the architecture firm Lake/Flato and with Jamey Garza of Benton/Garza Design. As part of the overall aim to build community in a creative and sustainable space, twenty to thirty renovated vintage trailers will be sold to make up a small village on the site. Owners will have the option to put their various Vagabond and Spartan trailers into a rental pool when they're not in residence. Over time, Lambert will also add yurts, hammocks and rammed earth buildings to the property to create El Cosmico's unconventional hotel. A large pool and pavilion will lie at the bedouin heart of the village; residents and visitors can cool off in the summer months with a swim, or warm up in the winter in wood-fired hot tubs.

El Cosmico intends to serve the community of Marfa. Lambert plans to build a series of art shacks along the road leading into the village - a silkscreen workshop, a pottery studio, and a darkroom - places for both guests and locals to get their hands dirty. Lambert hopes that El Cosmico will become part of the everyday fabric of Marfa. See it before it's there: El Cosmico is located on Highway 67, just south of Marfa. Come help El Cosmico celebrate its groundbreaking this September 22-24, 2006. El Cosmico blog. [Because it looks like a lot of folks want to comment on this, I've added a thread for discussion here.]