Culture, Climate and Cool - DMN

Western Civilization Thrives in Marfa
The Dallas Morning News has produced a 5 article segment devoted to the "Marfa Scene" as they call it. The thread which traces through these stories is the connection to current or former Dallasites. The stories are on the left, and the photos are not to be missed.

The blessed life - a cute story about Buck and Camp's discovery and transformation of an old church and rectory. The architectural details and furniture are so cool. This home exudes marfa with funky, yet clean spaces all due to good ol' sweat equity. 11 photos.

Off the bus - Shelley and Harry's converted bus station (w/ fabulous door by Camp Bosworth). How 'bout that cowboy boot collection? - nicely juxtaposed on a Metro shelf... that's a metaphor. 18 photos.

Sky's the limit - a photo expose of Robert Bellamy's hilltop getaway. Bellamy's clever use of found objects together with his excellent landscape architecture are right at home in Marfa. Architectural design by William Baker. 12 photos.

Nothin' doing - Bobby Minyard's place of serenity (yes, that Minyard) is a classic white adobe house. 11 photos.

Quirky, arty, western - Marfa is the life to covet in the middle of nowhere (as if we already didn't know! - open the floodgates). 17 photos.

"Western Civilization", Dallas Morning News

By MARIANA GREENE / The Dallas Morning News

MARFA, Texas – Emigrés and weekenders bristle at comparisons to Santa Fe, N.M. Not Santa Fe today, but the dusty adobe village at the beginning of its meteoric rise to cool and hot. The handwriting is on the wall, but Marfa's newly arrived gentry won't read it.

Not that there's anything wrong with Santa Fe, except that it's expensive and overrun with tourists and carpetbaggers.

Marfa bears many similarities to Santa Fe 30 years ago: remote location, vintage adobe architecture in various stages of ruin, discovered by artists and writers followed by cosmopolitan people of means. Then there's the rugged natural beauty, an indefinable light, the gentle mountain ranges, celebrities in blue jeans, a boutique hotel, chichi restaurants with odd hours and highbrow art festivals.Except for modern art cognoscenti, even Texans are vague about exactly where Marfa is on the map in their heads. It's a three-hour drive from El Paso or Midland – south of Fort Davis, west of Alpine, north of Big Bend and smack dab in the middle of drug smugglers' dirt routes between Mexico and big cities to the north. But the time it takes to reach Marfa, once you're bewitched, doesn't matter, whether you're from Dallas, Houston, New York, Los Angeles or London.

After a summer such as this one, it's easy to see why Dallasites gravitate here. Although the thermometer does occasionally climb into the upper 90s and higher, the low, low humidity relieves it. Once night falls in the high desert, the temperature plummets 30 degrees.
Like North Texas, Marfa has droughts. But a few days of rain in August turn the modest hills of Wild Rose Pass into a landscape as green as Ireland and the savannah of the Marfa plain gemlike with cactus blossoms.

Marfa's appeal, however, is more than the weather. Confirmed city people come for a long weekend and, to their surprise, start looking at houses for sale. Others think nothing of buying a 288-square-foot adobe whose roof has caved in and spending years' worth of weekends and vacations making it habitable. Those who can, spend their summers here; others look for ways to commute electronically.

For poets, artists and writers, private foundations have rehabbed and furnished bungalows for you to retreat to (should you be so talented or so lucky to be among the chosen) in order to concentrate on your work.

The locals (old ranching families and a majority Mexican-American working class) are friendly. People wave at one another and greet strangers with a smile and . . . full article w/ pictures

Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins @ Ballroom

Jenny Lewis, front-woman of Los Angeles band Rilo Kiley and all ‘round indie-darling goes solo for Ballroom Marfa performing material from her debut album, Rabbit Fur Coat. Gracing the Goode Crowley stage supported by Louisville sirens The Watson Twins, expect an evening of white soul and vintage folk with lyric-writing Elvis Costello declares the best he’s heard in many a day. Opening the show are Okkervil River lead singer Will Sheff as well as San Francisco based duo, The Blow.

"A gifted lyricist, Jenny Lewis is also a very fine singer, landing on each note with just the right touch. She can belt it out with a soulful, Neko Case-like clarion call ("Big Guns"), put on a Lucinda Williams drawl ("Rise up with Fists!"), or purr like Margot Timmins ("Happy"). The musical stylings of all of these talented ladies echo throughout the accompaniment on Rabbit Fur Coat, but Lewis takes these elements back to their roots. Without copping a retro sound, Jenny has tapped into a fifty-year-old Americana, finding that sweet spot at the birth of rock ‘n’ roll when folk, country, gospel and vocal pop were all melding together, but before the increasingly heavy backbeat of rock displaced the lilting shuffle of Sun Studios-era rockabilly. " Michael Keefe, Popmatters

Thursday October 26, 2006
Performing live at the Goode Crowley Theatre
8pm, doors at 7.30pm
Tickets $15 On Sale Now

The Marfa.Org ®@ŋd¤m‡zЄ®

A Rebel in Defense of Tradition
[The Nation] "Not since Aaron Copland turned 75 has the birthday of an American composer been greeted with the jubilation now surrounding Steve Reich as he enters his eighth decade. The classical establishment, which still hasn't figured out how to award Reich a Pulitzer Prize, has finally embraced a composer, and a movement, that it had relegated to the margins. Everyone else, it seems, has understood Reich's importance at least since 1974, when Deutsche Grammophon released a three-LP album of his music. The absurd delay in official recognition may be the price Reich has paid for his radical rejection of..."

Marfa: Blue skies ahead?
[Arizona Daily Star] "As the Rio Grande heads down river out of El Paso, the fences end, the cities vanish and the sky turns, well, sky blue. The longest sector on the border, the 510-mile Marfa Sector, is also the most wide-open. For 20 years, it's been the quietest, too. On a southern border where traffic has shifted back and forth in response to enforcement efforts, this stretch has always managed to stay out of the fray. It remains the great unknown. On one hand, it stands as the border's least crossed sector with the fewest apprehensions. On the other hand, it looms as a..."

Marfa Studio of Arts EXHIBIT: Works of Tom Matthews of Lubbock, through November 11. www.marfastudio.org

Historical Marfa Public School Photo, RPPC
Downtown Diary: Steers, Beers, and Queers in Marfa

The Marfa.Org ®@ŋd¤m‡zЄ®

A Contemporary Retreat With a 100-Year-Old Soul
How to Collect
Marfa Weekend Lively, Festive [San Angelo Standard]
Recent Additions to the Marfa.Org Gallery
Homemade Marfa T-shirts on eBay
Minimal to the Max: The Brownstone Collection

On the Screen at the Library
- Tonight, Fri, Oct 13, 8 pm, Art School Confidential
- Sun, Oct 15, 8 pm, Ballroom Dancing and Charm School

We Got Yellow Teeth?
During a lecture to the Del Rio Rotary Club, local dentist Dr. Larry Lindenschmidt blasted the Del Rio City Council's recent decision to eliminate fluoride from the city's water supply. Citing dental records in Marfa, Texas, Lindenschmidt pointed out that extraordinarily high levels of fluoride in the natural water source results in a different kind of problem. “It discolors their teeth so that they become yellow – but they have no cavities,” he said. Full article.

Weekend Album

A good time was had by all. As you finally wake from your post-weekend slumber and try to recollect the frenzy, it may help to go through your photos and piece together all the great things you saw and the great people you met. And we'd love to see your pictures too!

We've started a new album in the Marfa.Org Gallery for the Open House Weekend 2006, and right now it is as lonely as a little cloud in the big West Texas sky. So email your pictures to us at this email address: submit at marfa dot org, and share your memories with all the visitors here.

Etta Industry: Marfa Installation

In this installation D'Ette Cole will feature her unique array of interesting goods combined with contemporary artwork by Heyd Fontenot, Staci Schwantz, Evan Voyles, and Cole herself. Formal, found, and interesting object presented with a twist in a 1920's vacant house. Tattered floral wallpapered walls will be the backdrop to Cole's eclectic mix of cultural relics and art and should make for visually compelling vignettes.

Cole earned her studio art degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Since then she has worked as an artist in varying capacities - jewelry design, fashion stylist, graphic design, interior design, and art direction.

The house is at 220 W. Lincoln Street, as Cole says "53 paces west of the courthouse." See the flyer here. Artist website here.

The Marfa.Org ®@ŋd¤m‡zЄ®

Alumni May Get 99-year Lease for Blackwell Plans
Historic Photo of Pecos River Bridge Train Tressell, 1909
DVD: Donald Judd's Marfa (plus Tony Cragg)
More Alison V. Smith Photos of Marfa
The 2006 Open House Carpool Thread

The Pleasures of Merely Circulating (Jeanne Sinclair on guitar and vocals, Chris Cessac on bass and Robert Halpern drumming) will play at Ray's tomorrow night (October 5), together with The New Low and Black on Blonde.

Great photos from Peter Doig and Johnathan Meese's visit to Marfa and performance at the Ballroom on September 28th are viewable here.

Judd Works On Paper at inde/jacobs

inde/jacobs gallery presents works on paper by Donald Judd. The exhibition includes 11 large-scale etchings from the artist's series of 16. In addition, aquatints, lithographs, and a rare colored woodcut are on exhibit. Many of these works can be previewed here.

The gallery is also presenting the Marfa debut of non-objective photographer Ellen Carey. The large scale Polaroid Pulls bridge the gap between minimalism and abstract expressionism. Carey's work can be previewed at her website.

The rare jewel of the exhibition is an early woodcut by Roy Lichtenstein that pre-dates his interest in cartoons and the use of Ben Day dots. This woodcut (shown at left), in the manner of Jackson Pollack, dates back to 1957 and was later signed by the artist. This piece could be included in any museum retrospective of Lichtenstein's work.

inde/jacobs' permanent inventory includes works on paper by other Chinati related artists including Roni Horn, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre and others.