Where on earth is Marfa?

No Place Like Here: Marfa, Texas from Etsy on Vimeo.

In the Jan Feb 2011 Edition of Vogue Living they ran a story on Marfa. Prior to reading this Marfa didn't register on my radar. Where the hell is Marfa? (....besides I thought it was definitely a typo...wasn't it meant to be Mafra?) I cut the article out anyway and have had it pinned up on my inspiration board. The thing about Marfa that really stuck out was it's quirkiness.

Then last week Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks posted that she'd just been on a 10 day road trip to Marfa. Still convinced it was Mafra I had a pang of 'oh no, she's made a typo'. Then finally the penny dropped.

Heidi posted a link to this house and my heart grew even fonder of Marfa. So I started to do a little searching around and came across this great blog post. I discovered that Donald Judd, the sculptor, moved to Marfa in 1971 and in doing so has helped put Marfa on the map. He founded The Chianti Foundation, a contemporary art museum that looks incredibly striking and houses 100 of his untitled works in mill aluminium. There are also 15 of his large-scale concrete works scattered across a field in the Chianti grounds.

I know this is a tangent but any mention of Donald Judd makes me chuckle. Our neighbour, also a sculptor, has a sticker on the back of his car which says 'I Love Judd'. The L.F. being an football crazed lad innocently and rather enthusiastically asked our neighbour if he supported Carlton, automatically assigning his love of Judd to Chris Judd! He he, makes me chuckle every time I think of this. Anyway, Judd ended up leaving Marfa for quieter parts but he left a huge legacy and a growing creative community.

There's also the Frank Lloyd Wright Fountation, in Taliesin West worth factoring into the road trip....

Take a look at these sweet links too: Hotel Paisano looks fantastic, or if you're up for some pretty upmarket camping the El Cosmico Trailer Park looks awesome. Trailer trash I think not!
Fancy Pony Land where else would you get guns screen printed into your skirt holster than Texas? I love it.

My enthusiasm for this tiny town is growing rapidly. The L.F. is talking about heading over to the U.S. for South By Southwest next year. I'm thinking we may have to tag along and make it one mighty fine road trip. Open road, desolate landscapes.... the Texan desert really seem to be calling me.... Weird, I've never had a desire for the U.S, previously.