Marfa has to be the strangest little city in the world. You get a good sense of this miles before you even reach the township. About 20 minutes outside of Marfa (maybe more, maybe less -- time is so relative in the great expanse of West Texas), just before you reach Valentine, sits a giant white Zeppelin in the midst of prairie grass and Hereford cattle. What the hell is it for? Is it a weather balloon? An experiment by the Army Corps of Engineers? A Judd sculpture? Something some lunatic from Roswell constructed after vast amounts of research and one too many episodes of Art Bell’s "Coast to Coast AM"? Please, enlighten me. Just past this monstrosity sits Prada Marfa. I swear to God. Prada Marfa is a boutique literally in the middle of nowhere. The doors don’t open. There is no cash register. But it is continually air conditioned, and lit at night.
I’m sure you’re wondering either, a) hey, this is the Downtown Diary, what gives? and/or b) what the hell were you doing in Marfa?
The first week in October hosts the Chinati Foundation’s Open House, and as the 16th is our wedding anniversary, we decided to celebrate early. The Chinati Foundation, a 340-acre museum that hosts the permanent collections of Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and John Chamberlain and funds internationally recognized artists in creating permanent collections. During the Open House, the galleries of Marfa, and the City of Marfa converge into a street festival, complete with Mariachis, cocktail parties, and the time honored Texan tradition of barbeque -- in this case brisket smothered in Claude’s sauce served with charro beans and rice.
Thousands from all over the world flock to this nexus of contemporary art and Texas culture for the Open House, and you know you’ve arrived when you see flocks of very lost-looking Germans and Californians wandering the streets with a look of awe, as if to say, “How did this happen?”
Good question. How did a tiny ranching community come to play host to one of the most important contemporary art shows of the year? It all started when the contemporary sculptor Donald Judd ran out of space in New York and moved to Marfa so that he could buy land and create permanent exhibits. His friends followed him, their friends followed them, and so on. No marketing firm came in to build a brand. No redevelopment occurred. It was a natural, slow process. Boyd Elder, a friend of ours -- painter, rancher, former El Pasoan, long-time Valentine resident, and friend of the Judd family -- served as our guide through Marfa. He remarked in a documentary shown Saturday morning that when he heard about Judd moving to the area he thought it was a joke. Well, 10 years ago if you had told me that Marfa was a growing art center, I would have thought you were out of your mind. I think most people heard Marfa and thought strictly of the Marfa lights.
The demographic of Marfa is bizarre to say the least. About 50 percent of the town is “local” -- hardened West Texas ranchers, builders, laborers, and employees of local enterprise. The other 50 percent consists of, what do the consulting firms call them? “Cultural creatives?” Eccentrics, artists and gallerists from around the world move to Marfa -- many of them starting with internships at the Chinati Foundation -- and decide that the fresh air and budding scene are worth the stay. There are very few amenities here -- working ATM’s and batteries were difficult to find. I didn’t see one grocery store, though I’m sure there had to be one. But young people are constantly moving in, escaping the high rents and saturation of Austin and L.A. and as they establish themselves, buildings are being renovated (both by the Judd Foundation and private firms) and new businesses are being christened. These didn’t come to Marfa because there were jobs and amenities. There were no jobs. For a long time Donald Judd was pretty much the only employer in town. In fact, the Judd and Chinati Foundations are still the largest employers in town. And as for amenities … inside the lobby of the Thunderbird Hotel are the few luxury goods one can purchase in the township. Bottles of Vueve-Cliquot Champagne, $50 bottles of Cabernet, and packs of American Spirit cigarettes sit alongside Tom’s of Maine toiletries and gourmet chocolates. That’s pretty much it. But yet the town is growing at a startling pace.
Marfa now boasts a public radio station, bookstores, bistros and cafés. We stayed at the Hotel Paisano -- an historic Trost hotel, which completed renovations literally days before the start of the festival. A new hotel recently opened called the Thunderbird. Once a roadhouse Motor Inn, the façade has been kept the same while the rooms were gutted and designed with the Judd signature style in mind. This once-kitschy staple of the road warrior has been transformed into a five-star hotel. The furniture is all hand made in the Swedish minimalist style, the floors are finished concrete, the walls are stark and white and dramatic desert cacti and florae create a barrier from the street.
The spaces used as galleries are renovated warehouses and factories. These spaces are raw, keeping the original handmade wavy glass and cracked concrete floors, and exposing the brick and trusses. My favorite space is the Ice Plant. Located across the street from the power plant, it played host last weekend to the Dandy Warhols and had the best sound I’ve ever heard in a venue.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that all is peachy keen. They’ve got their own problems. After the barbeque on Saturday Night, Boyd took us to a joint called Ray’s (it’s actually Joe’s Place, but Ray’s is the nom de riguer), where locals mingled with the newbies and tourists. I spoke with one local named Mike who is an El Paso ex-pat. He moved to Marfa about four years ago and is ready to go back home. He’s not very happy with the art crowd. He told me that the economy is suffering in its own way from the new residents. The land is being bought up by 501 (c) (3)’s like the Judd Foundation and the Chinati Foundation who are not subject to property tax because of their charity status. Property values are through the roof. Boyd told me that houses have gone from $30,000 dollar homes to $130,000 in the last 10 years. The burden of property taxes is falling to the locals who are slowly being forced to leave. Mike asked me to, “Look around -- tell me where you see sidewalks. Take a look at the parks. I mean, yeah, that’s nice that they have art classes for the kids, but still.” There was a noticeable lack of public infrastructure.
I asked Heidi, a young woman named who grew up in Vermont and lived in San Francisco before she moved to Marfa two years ago to work in the Thunderbird, whether the new residents were being integrated into the public schools, and she told me that the majority of the new residents were sending their kids to Montessori. I also asked her about the relationship between the job market and cost of living, and she conceded that it was not comparable. “There are businesses opening up. The hotel. The public radio station just opened up in the spring. More and more people are coming in, so there will be more jobs.” She went on to say that, “some people are very receptive to the change and some people are not and that’s completely natural."
Now, it could be argued that Marfa was a dying town and that their contributions are creating jobs, providing culture, raising property values and encouraging private investors to move in -- who would then take up the burden of property taxes once their businesses are established -- but for the time being some of the locals feel that the art crowd’s contributions are an equivalent to “let them eat cake.”
The bright spot to the culture shock was Ray’s, a bona fide dive bar where everyone parties. It was wonderful to see old men in their work clothes and tejanas, neighborhood kids, and the hipster crowd all rocking out to punk rock on Friday night and cumbia on Saturday night. The friendliness of the crowd poured into the streets and at that moment I felt a little homesick and missed the Tap.
But let’s go back to the art for a moment. One of the best exhibits I saw was that of Armando Miguelez at the Waypoint. He traces maps of megacities such as Mexico City and Sao Paulo, Brazil onto glass tiles and exhibits them to show the vastness and Byzantine nature of a city which, unencumbered by such niceties as planning and zoning, is a living breathing entity. At the Waypoint he exhibited a map of El Paso and Cd. Juarez to illustrate our relationship to one another and the disparity of city growth. Through the maps we can see the suburban sprawl of El Paso versus the dense growth of Juarez, and we can see how one city seamlessly and fluidly blends into the other. With the combination of Downtown redevelopment and the border fence, which was just approved by congress, I fear that we will lose this beautiful fluidity forever.
We will see our picture-perfect glossy little Downtown and a 30-foot fence, forever blocking out the memory of our days of mutual co-dependency and mirroring decay. No tourist will ever be able to walk to Juarez and remark to their friends back home about the strange and slow morphing that they experienced walking down El Paso Street. Juarez will hit their senses like the brick wall, which divides us.
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Email Jenni at jenni@newspapertree.com.
