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My My Marfa
by Tonya Warner
At the beginning of October, I went with a friend from New York to the
Chinati Open House Weekend in Marfa, TX. The
Chinati Foundation, an art museum founded by Donald Judd,
has been hosting an open house weekend since 1986. The open house features
access to Judd’s former homes, talks, special exhibitions, large
free communal meals, and a free musical guest each year. Here is my account
of our weekend.
Friday, Oct. 5th
7:00 pm – We finally get underway in our journey
to Marfa, after the delay of a missed flight, with any dream of crashing
the VIP cocktail party at 5:30 squashed. Now quite dark, the trip is a
long straight strip of highway through a landscape of black nothingness
with our only companions being large trucks.
8:30 pm – We stop at one of the few towns along
the way, so that I could use the bathroom at a local gas station that
is festooned with silver fringe and bows to support the high school football
team. The interior is covered with sexy pictures of cowboys, NASCAR racers,
and Tecate models. They sell dill pickle flavored sunflower seeds.
10:00 pm – We finally make it to Marfa. The last
hour or so was down a 2 lane highway with no signs of life on either side
or the road itself. The most surreal moment occurred when we pass by the
Marfa Prada store – a site-specific art piece that is a small storefront
boutique with Prada products on display. It is quite far out of town and
at night is well-lit – the only illumination for miles.
When we get to town, we decide to start wandering. About 4 blocks down,
we come across a raging soul music dance party and I know I’m in
the right place. My fears that the weekend would be filled with old rich
people are quickly dissolved.
After dancing ourselves into a sweaty fury, Steve and I set off for more
exploring. Along the way coming to find a postcard advertising a Queen’s
Nails Annex Annex. A bit perplexed by this slice of SF in
TX, we set off to find it. We chat with the guys who run it for a bit
and take in a sampling of names and references that seem almost like inside
jokes so far from our shared home of the Mission.
1:00 am – Back on the road to find our campsite,
35 miles outside of town. Again, there is not another car in sight and
– I am not joking – loose livestock.
Saturday, Oct. 6
After a quick campfire breakfast and well-needed shower, we set off first
to the Chinati Foundation, the organization in charge of the weekend and
the museum started by Donald Judd. This is definitely Judd country –
at one point in the weekend, I spot someone selling “I [square]
Judd” bumper stickers. I have never been the biggest fan of Judd’s
work, however, I can defiantly see the obsessive concentration on line
and form that is fostered by such a barren and remote locale. It is impossible
not to appreciate how his repetition of variations of polished metal boxes
interact with the surrounding landscape. There are two enormous hangers
filled exclusively with these sculptures.
The rest of the buildings remind me, sadly, of a concentration camp or
military complex, as, I learn much later, they once were. Rows of neutral-colored
U-shaped buildings stretch into the distance with no indication of what
secrets they might hold. Indeed, walking into each is akin to unwrapping
a package – to find you are suddenly walking through Ilya Kabakov’s
construction of an abandoned Russian school house, for instance. Other
buildings contain the Fluid Sheet Constructions by David Rabinowitch,
who was in town giving a talk, or works by Dan Flavin, Roni Horn, and
others. Flavin, especially, fully exploited the peculiar architecture,
both in terms of light and sound, placing his signature neon lights in
the middle of the U bend, allowing the colors to reflect around the corner
and the sound to echo strangely from one side to the other. After wandering
through the “bunkers”, it was time to make our way across
the brush, avoiding stray cacti and jumping insects, to examine the large
concrete sculptures out in the field. They are agin Judd’s variations
on boxes and have a direct relationship to the landscape.
1:00 pm – We head into town to check out the John
Chamberlain building, filled with the twisted car sculptures that made
him famous. There was also a giant foam bed sculpture that visitors were
invited to lay on and watch a film Chamberlain made in the 60s that would
be porn if it weren’t so arty. It was ridiculously comfortable to
lay on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how the whole thing was
basically built for an orgy. Hrm.
3:00 pm – After a quick bite from the Food Shark
truck (excellent falafel), we moseyed around the galleries in town, which
were rather disappointing on the whole. There seems to be a tendency to
show local artists and friends rather than truly trying to put together
an exhibit. This is, of course, helped by the low cost of real estate
and a measly $25 permit to sell art works. The sole exception to this
is inde/jacobs,
who is the local gallery for Judd and Chamberlain, among other established
artists. The best exhibit I saw all weekend (excluding Chianti-run spaces)
was in inde/jacobs’s photography and print annex. Featuring embossed
prints of bodies of water by Ted Ollier, Polaroid pulls by Ellen
Carey, and experimental photography by Danae
Falliers, the show was eclectic but the individual parts
were excellent.
5:30 pm – After walking all day, we were ready
to sit and eat – luckily the annual huge communal dinner that occupies
half of one of the town’s two main streets, was already being set
up. And then came the deluge: a thunderstorm of an intensity that sadly
we never see in northern California. While the streets turned to rivers,
we all waited it out, huddled under canopies and in galleries until it
was dry enough for the rice and beans to be served and the Mariachi band
to start playing.
8:00 pm – After dinner, we made a quick stop by
the Brink
camp, which is a group driving around the country with two vintage motor
homes, setting up film screenings along the way. What they were showing
was a fairly interesting documentary about an artist I had never heard
of, but we had to be off to see Sonic Youth play down the street –
the rock waits for no one.
11:00 pm – Sonic Youth was pretty damn awesome
and the crowd very laid back. We head off to a house party where another
very good band from Austin is playing. But, eventually, we know we have
to head back to the campsite and get ready for a long day of travel.
Sunday, Oct 7
9:00 am – We pack up and head to the communal breakfast
at Chinati – a room with a dirt floor, full of hung-over hipsters,
young hip families with children, and a definate lack of coffee.
11:30 am – Bidding a goodbye to Marfa – a
weird jumble of locals and art people, where boarded up houses sit beside
a shop that sells $2500 vintage lamps – we hit the road. On our
way back to El Paso, we make a point to stop at the Prada store for pictures.
The front window has gashes in it where people have tried to break in
– its creators do not want it maintained but allowed to slowly become
more and more disheveled. Around the back, there is a ledge where visitors
have left little shrines of trash, as if giving offerings to the strange
mystical art god that would place a Prada store in the middle of the desert.
6:00 pm - Time to hop on a plane home to the city. I
eat a delicious but floppy Texas burrito and notice that I am sharing
a flight with an Arizona rodeo queen – bedecked in shiny blue cowgirl
shirt and sash, with a silver crowd on the brim of her white cowboy hat.
Amazing.
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