Marfa, TX

How to describe Marfa? It’s ridiculously cute and in the middle of nowhere. With 2000 people, pretty much everyone knows or knows of each other. “There’s no such thing as a 5-minute errand,” a local told me— you always run into someone you know and end up chatting for at least 15 minutes. Despite its small town status, there are many young or young-at-heart, hip, creative, artsy folks. “This is the island of misfit toys,” another local said, “you have to be at least a little strange to live here.”

There is one coffee shop, one laundromat, one post office, one library, one radio station, one thrift store, but at least ten art galleries and boutiques.

When artist Donald Judd moved to Marfa from NYC in the 70′s, he began the transformation the town would undergo into a way-station for culture and art. Now, the Chinati Foundation and the Judd Foundation continue to maintain and expand the permanent installations Judd initiated.

The Lannan Foundation has also taken up shop in Marfa, providing fellowships by invitation only to promising writers. Writers come, are housed for the duration, and given a Prius. You know who’s a Lannan Fellow in Marfa because you can see them tooling around town in the latter component of the endowment.

Many folks garden in Marfa. “It’s the number one hobby in America!” exclaimed Rachel Lindley, Marfa Radio programmer and my generous host. Rachel lives with her husband, Chase, just outside of town. Indeed, they garden themselves, and hope to expand to cultivating an entire acre of their 5-acre parcel. Chase currently works aiding others around Marfa maintain gardens and chicken coops— mostly folks for whom Marfa is a seasonal home.

Marfa-grown produce can be sold at the farmer’s market (when I was there, it was off-season). Anyone can be a vendor, free of fees. This is the kind of open-market space I would like to see more of, as in urban and suburban areas, free street vending is often not allowed. The large covered pavilion where the farmer’s market is held is also home to The Food Shark, a mobile catering truck that shows up almost daily in downtown Marfa. Also coming along with the truck is a “dining car,” an old, gray converted schoolbus with room to sit and eat inside. I got their homemade banana pudding. YUM!

Much in Marfa has been done with great care and style. There are literary readings, art openings, film screenings, receptions, live music, and parties. Everything you would hope to find in a big city culture-wise.

That’s one advantage of the town that Lorna, owner of clothing boutique Happy Pony Land, expressed to me. She and her husband bought a house in Marfa in 2007 after several years traveling between National Parks, where her husband works as a park ranger. Lorna’s speech was narrative and detailed, and she swept up her shop as she spoke. How she came to be a clothing designer and maker originated in her studies of writing and book art at Evergreen in Washington. She began sewing paper, then leading to sewing clothing by hand as a side-project while living in New Orleans. Lorna then worked as creative director for a salon/gallery/activist space in Seattle, and created her own clothing line, again as a side-project. When the project was complete at the gallery space she had been working at, she decided to go for it with her clothing line. It was following that step that she met her husband and took her workshop on the road.

So, why did they choose Marfa as the place to settle down? “The number one thing was community,” Lorna said, “There are such cool people here– super-friendly. Creative people who care about stuff.” Unlike the ‘hedonistic’ art scenes she had seen, Lorna feels that in Marfa, there is a greater emphasis on community involvement. It not only contains the positive aspects of a small town and the good quality of life that entails, but is also part of the “circulation of the bloodstream of the cities.”

So, why does Marfa give hope? “Well, I was having a conversation with a friend about this just the other day,” Lorna explained, “Small is the answer. We need to make things smaller, and take a personal stake in what’s happening… Living here, I have never been so involved in politics. In a bigger place, you think, ‘Someone else will write that letter to the editor,’ but you can’t do that here… Lots of people are missing a sense of connection, but it’s still out there.”