Trip to Marfa

Tom and I just returned from a trip to Marfa, TX. Our main purpose was to install an exhibition of my photographs about the Adobe Alliance and Simone Swan at Building 98, near the Chinati Foundation.  Building 98 is a gallery run by Mona Garcia.

Here are some pictures of the pictures:

This last one shows the group at the Adobe Alliance workshop in the spring of 2010.

It was Chinati Weekend in Marfa, and there was a lot to see and do.  We made the rounds of the galleries.  I was really impressed by the work of Claire Oswalt at Galleri Urbane.  She does wonderfully detailed graphite drawings, some of them quite small.  The tree picture is maybe 5x7 inches, and the head portion of the portrait is maybe an inch and a half!

The other thing to look at in Marfa, besides all the art, is just the wonderful light that bathes and beautifies everything in the town and on the streets, and also the wonderful spaces outside of town.  I found a footpath through a scrubby desert pasture, with a sign saying that people were allowed to walk there, so I did.

We also went to a football game, where the Marfa Shorthorns demolished the visiting team.  The band played "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and "Deep in the Heart of Texas."  Some of the football players did double duty, playing for their school on the field, and playing in the band at half time.  People who live in small towns have to be multi-talented and play many roles, in order for everything to get done that needs to get done.  No One-Dimensional Men or women in Marfa!

Adobe Abode

A show of some of my photographs is opening this weekend at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, TX.

The photographs are about an adobe house near Presidio, TX, that was built by the Adobe Alliance and Simone Swan in 1998. The house belongs to Simone, and in the fall of 2007, my partner and I visited Simone and photographed the house. We were spending a couple of weeks in Marfa, TX, and our visit to the Swan house was a side trip. It was a very special evening: we went to Ojinaga, Mexico, across the border for dinner, and this was my first visit to Mexico. Then we slept in the domed out-building, where moonlight streamed in through the tiny skylights in the adobe dome roof. The next morning I got up and photographed the house at daybreak.

Simone's house is different from most of the other adobe houses in the area, in that its roof is also adobe. There are vaulted roofs and one domed roof. Simone learned the technique of adobe vaulting from the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, who wrote Architecture for the Poor. His idea was that if the poor folks of Egypt could built their houses entirely of mud, rather than having to buy wood and other materials for the roofs, they could be houses very affordably. The Adobe Alliance has taken the same approach.

Simone's house is also entirely off the grid, powered by solar panels and a windmill. Water comes from an underground well.

The vaults and domes are very beautiful. When we first arrived on Halloween night, the house and its outbuildings were bathed in the rosy glow of the setting desert sun. I photographed Simone beside her house that late afternoon.





The next morning I photographed the view from the roof, across the border, where I could see the lights of Ojinaga twinkling right before sunrise.



In two weeks I am going to travel to the Swan House again for an Adobe Alliance workshop. I am going to document the raising of an adobe vault and talk to members of the Adobe Alliance about their work, in order to write an illustrated article for Cite magazine in Houston.