Marfa Refried
“I left my heart in Marfa” laments a young fashion blogger, having just returned from the popular desert Mecca. The same sentiment may hold true for the collective hearts of the twenty-five RDA members who voyaged west to Marfa and the Trans-Pecos region in early February for the RDA’s eighteenth city study tour. After taking in the sights and immersing themselves in the rich culture of the small town, it is apparent why. Marfa’s eclectic blend of magnificent and quirky architecture, which alternatively stands out against and blends into the monochromatic landscape that forms its natural canvas, helps create the town’s cultish charm and establishes it as a veritable destination for art and architecture lovers. As the architectural historian and tour leader Stephen Fox surmises, “Marfa, Texas is not in the middle of nowhere. It’s at the far edge of nowhere. And that is its magic.”
Upon arriving in El Paso on their first day, the group traveled to Valentine, Texas where they mailed Valentine’s cards from the local post office and soon checked into Marfa’s legendary Spanish-Mediterranean-style Paisano Hotel. While the hotel was originally built by El Paso’s most famous early twentieth century architect Henry C. Trost, the establishment was rehabilitated in 2001—one of many renewal projects benefiting from the recent surge of design-minded individuals and eminent architects to the region.
Later that evening, the group attended a reception at the picturesque yet austere home of Tim Crowley, where guests enjoyed an ideal sunset view, complements of architect Carlos Jimenez, who pivoted the living room out of alignment so that the view encompasses the vast and awe-inspiring Davis Mountain range.
The next morning began with a short visit to the diminutive 10 x 10 House, a small retreat home designed by San Antonio architect Candid Rogers for himself. The home is an excellent example of Marfa architecture blending into the minimal, organic landscape, as the small 320 SF space extends into the outdoors via two flap doors fusing interior and exterior. Next, the group visited the rehabilitated home of artist turned architect Kristin Bonkemeyer, whose home serves as a studio for both her ceramicist husband and painter mother, as well as a space for her own architectural practice.
The contemporary art Mecca, The Chinati Foundation, however, was the day’s destination point. In 1971, the New York-based artist Donald Judd visited Marfa in search of a place to live and work. The foundation grew out of his first estate purchase and through collaboration with the Dia Art Foundation who purchased parts of Fort D.A, Russell. In 1984, Judd stripped the existing buildings to their concrete and brick shells, replaced garage doors with square-sectioned aluminum framed windows, and built self-supporting steel vaults atop the flat concrete roof deck of both buildings. According to the foundation’s website, the complex today houses the work of fifteen outdoor concrete works by Donald Judd, one hundred aluminum works by Judd, twenty-five sculptures by John Chamberlain, an installation by Dan Flavin, and works by Carl Andre, Ingólfur Arnarsson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, David Rabinowitch, and John Wesley, creating a unique mix of bright lights, amazing aluminum boxes, and crushed cars. A fitting ending to the morning’s activities was spent indulging in a Mediterranean feast in a renovated school bus, catered by Food Shark.
The tour continued through the afternoon with a bus tour, led by Rice Architecture graduate and Marfa resident Peter Stanley, who highlighted both historic and new architecture along with a climb up to the top of the courthouse rotunda. After an impromptu organ recital by Wayne Shandera at the First Baptist Church, tour participants enjoyed seeing the rehabilitated westward homes of dual residents of Houston and Marfa, Toni and Jeff Beauchamp, Casey and JoAnn Williams, Barbara Hill, and Amy and Holden Shannon. Interior designer Marlys Tokerud entertained the group with a reception at her expansive west-side compound that evening.
The third day of the trip immersed the group in the natural beauty and history of the broader region. Archaeologist and national treasure Bob Mallouf led a once-in-a-lifetime all-day tour beginning with Fort Leaton, the largest adobe structure in Texas, Cielo Bravo, the site of the pre-contact Indian pueblo on a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande, and a narrated tour through Big Bend National Park. The outdoor tour ended with a sunset-lit hike through Bee Cave Canyon where prehistoric pictographs and petroglyphs are inscribed in a rock shelter. The trek ended with a lively Valentine’s dinner dance at the very famous Gage Hotel in appropriately named (given the day’s trek) Marathon, Texas. Designed by Houston artist George O’Jackson, Jr. the hotel was designed to be a place, as its website describes, “of deep quiet and repose…a place where your heart speaks to your soul.” It is no wonder that the group indeed may have left their hearts in Marfa, “heading east,” staff member and tour participant Kathryn Fosdick says, “with our hearts facing west.”
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Filed Under: City Study Tours, Marfa, Tours
