The iconic Prada Marfa “store”
Has the post-Covid (if one could even call it that yet), get-outta-dodge bug bitten you just yet? It hit me hard earlier this Spring, after patiently staying put for the better part of a year. Travel - and specifically immersing myself in new cultures, arts, fashion, and just people in general - has always been an essential part of my creative process. It’s how I get inspired. It feeds me. Breaking out of my bubble to experience something different is, quite simply put, the best. And I imagine that if you’re a creative - or even a non-creative - you too feel me.
Our palatial trailer at El Cosmico
The opportunity for some newness finally presented itself when my friend Jane Burke invited me to join her and some friends down in Marfa, TX, for an art show she’d be curating with Rule Gallery. Jane is a curator of fashion and textiles at the Denver Art Museum, whom I met some years back when I had the opportunity to style a fashion show at the museum (back in my former life as a boutique owner at Goldyn).
Selfie with mom. I’m wearing the Rollo Hoops and Michael Amulet Necklace.
Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity, even if it meant dragging my 73-year-old mom along. She and I already had tentative plans to visit family in Arizona, and tagging on some extra days on the road to get to Marfa felt like a no-brainer. It’s somewhere I’ve longed to visit for many years, as a much-storied, offbeat hub of arts and culture in the far West Texas desert. I’d heard tales of the scene there: of glamping in Airstream trailers at El Cosmico and watching the stars explode against an unadulterated black sky, of glamorous parties in unexpected locales, with down-and-out ranchers mixing with the international art-world glitterati in this middle-of-nowhere junction. I was intrigued.
Old church building near Marfa’s main drag.
Marfa was, indeed, mostly all it was cracked up to be. A place that could have been any old one-stoplight, podunk town, was turned seemingly overnight (or, realistically, over some decades) into an unlikely destination for artists, gallerists, collectors, and spectators alike, by the vision of the ultra-minimalist artist Donald Judd. Having apparently discovered the town during a train ride through the West Texas countryside in which he was so taken by the landscape that he had to stop, Judd eventually took over a former army base, and turned the empty artilleries and barracks into his own creative paradise. Others eventually followed suit, and today one can walk down the street and see what may at first appear to be sun-faded, abandoned buildings, only to walk through the doors and discover blue-chip art on display inside. Truth be told, the tiny town is now filled (I mean, filled as much as a tiny town can be) with fine dining, ultra-hip shops, and plenty of New Yorkers donning straw cowboy hats. It’s amusing to say the least. And yes, there’s also that iconic Prada “store” outside of town that even non-artsy-folk might recognize. I dug it. It’s a hell of a long drive to get there, but overall well worth the trouble if you ask me.
Capturing that West Texas desert light
Jane’s art show, by the way, was a smash hit. It featured artists George Bolster and Dong Kyu Kim, whose work both uses very tactile mediums - textiles and sewn receipts/scraps of paper, respectively - to address questions around the deeper meaning of our existence and origins. Topics I personally spend a lot of time wondering about myself! Bolster’s work for the show came about after his residency with the SETI Institute, during which time he took digital photographs of radio telescopes, used to detect astronomical objects and potential extraterrestrial life. Bolster then transformed them, pixel by pixel, into woven tapestries using industrial looms. In some cases Bolster painstakingly removed threads and re-integrated them, embroidering celestial bodies superimposed over the original image. These works were then mounted over larger tapestries, depicting endangered landscapes like the Grand Stairs Escalante National Monument in Utah. His work speaks to the boundaries of reality, what exists beyond what the eye can see, as well as the very here-and-now component of human evolution and the degradation of our current planet. Kim’s work, on the other hand, involved hand-sewn receipts, notes, and scraps of paper from his own personal archives, put together in the style of Korean jogakbo patchwork quilting (a nod to the artist’s ethnic origins). To view them together was a voyeuristic lens into the artist’s world, weaving a narrative about his life and personhood, and preoccupations with status, aspiration, and class. “Are we defined by what we consume?” seemed to be an overarching question the work presented to the viewer. In this capitalistic society, perhaps so.
George Bolster’s tapestries weave together images of the Allan Telescope Array, posing questions about what lies beyond our own planet
Together, the joint exhibition provoked a lot of bigger questions for spectators, and getting a personal tour of the work by Jane, along with the opportunity to hear Bolster talk about his own work in person, made this show the highlight of the trip. My own work with Talisman blends ethereal, magical elements with those that are simply pleasingly tactile and aesthetic, and so I felt a resonance with both Kim and Bolster on that level too.
Dong Kyu Kim’s scrap-paper-and-receipt, pojagi-style quilt narrates the life of the artist through his own personal consumption
Some of the Marfa trip crew, from left: myself, Sarah Kinn, Kristy Koopman, Jane Burke, Amy Johnson, Willow King, and Ava Goldberg.
As for mom and I, we took up lodging at the aforementioned El Cosmico, and found the oversized trailer to be quite comfortable, save for the dusty, sticker-filled path one has to drag their luggage over to get there. Mom was admittedly a little reluctant (read: cranky) about the idea of trailer living at first, but I think all-in-all a good time was had by everyone. The other women who joined on the trip were a delight as well - some of whom I knew (even a couple former Goldyn vendors!), and some of whom were new faces I gladly became acquainted with.
The lounge at El Cosmico. Kind of obsessed with these turquoise tiles!
I found a lot of inspiration on this trip, from small-scale window exhibits of melted glass sculpture, to Jane’s art show at Rule, to the expertly-curated shops like Wrong, Esperanza Vintage (oh for the love of vintage!), Garza, and others. Not to mention the conversations that were had, and the overall vibe of the town. It’s inevitable that something of this experience will carry itself over into the new work that I create at Talisman, as it always does. Just what that might be remains to be seen, and in all likelihood will probably not be literal nor will even be immediately visible to the beholder (that’s the beauty of abstract design, after all). But if you sit with it closely enough, you might just notice a little bit of West Texas dusting Talisman’s new work ;)
Melted glass art in a window display - something I find I could gaze at for hours. Artist unknown.
Pieces of the town.