BlackBook Off the Beaten Path Nothing in Marfa is messy or less than beautiful — not even the local laundrette, which could easily pass for an art installation. Wrong’s owner, Buck Johnston, who moved here from California with her artist husband, Campbell “Camp” Bosworth. “We have so many young people coming and going,” adds Bosworth, whose hand-carved wooden Dairy Queen cones are on display throughout the stark space. It’s been more than two decades since Judd passed away, yet his streamlined aesthetic is reflected at every turn. Nothing in Marfa is messy or less than beautiful – not even the local laundrette, which could easily pass for an art installation, with its moody lighting and stark rows of whirring chrome machines. The Get Go grocery (thegetgomarfa.com), a gourmet shop that carries local products, has a throwback feel that would make any design nut smile. Across the street is Marfa Brands (marfabrands.com), a farmhouselike space where artisanal bars of soap are on display alongside lucky horseshoes. The next block over you’ll find the custom-leather shop Cobra Rock (cobrarock.com) and its updated take on Western-style boots, and farther north, Communitie (communitie .net), a store founded by sustainable-fashion designer John Patrick Fleming. He had been living in Todos Santos, Mexico, when he started hearing about this magical little town in West Texas. “I went online and bought an adobe house sight unseen,” says Fleming. His breezy pieces stand amid woodblockprinted textiles and clothing by cult labels like Japanese brand Visvim. It’s the natural wonders, though, that drew Lebermann, who grew up on a ranch near Austin, to settle where members of her family have been ranching since the 1950s. “What people often forget is that we are on the border of Mexico,” she says. “It’s beautiful and also intense.” She has become no less a multihyphenate artist than her fellow Marfans. Ballroom Marfa, her nonprofit foundation that hosts exhibitions of commissioned works from hot-ticket artists, recently put on a show featuring New York–based Jibade-Khalil 30 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
PHOTOS DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN Huffman, who made a massive installation that pays tribute to Grace Jones for the space’s outdoor gallery. “I am not an absolute disciple of minimalism; I welcome other schools of thought,” Lebermann says – a provocative statement in a town where people speak of Judd in a tone of utmost reverence. After opening Ballroom, she revived the Thunderbird, whose 24 rooms feature lowslung furniture and turntables with record libraries (Coltrane, Cash). Then, a few years ago, she and Barnette opened Capri. The contemporary art–filled restaurant (with works by Matthew Day Jackson and Dana Schutz) is where Barnette, who trained for a decade at the beloved Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, serves his wildly innovative dishes inspired by the region’s pre-Columbian cuisine. It’s also where visiting art-world bigwigs hold their big dinners, and this being Marfa, it regularly hosts artists’ residencies. Most of the time, though, it’s home to locals who come for cocktails and food that is astonishingly good for a town this small. Darkness has fallen when a dozen friends gather here on a Thursday night. Laura Copelin, the executive director of Ballroom Marfa, is pitching to turn the town’s public garden into an orchard for easier access to top-rate produce. Meanwhile, Joey Benton, a Brooklyn native who moved here two decades ago and runs the design studio Silla (sillamarfa.com), is talking about opening a liquor store that would be a sophisticated alternative to the drive-through. Most of the faces in the crowd are familiar, some from dinner the previous night at Stellina (stellina marfa.com), a Mediterranean restaurant with a big horseshoe bar, and some from a reading that Benton’s father, the novelist William Benton, gave at the Crowley Theater (crowley theater.org) – a space that recalls an Edward Hopper painting – earlier in the week. The meal starts with Barnette’s signature “rockamole” and house-made plantain chips and moves on to an even more divine appetiser: fritos and black caviar, served with vodka in shot glasses fashioned out of ice. Then comes the main dish, a succulent Texan steak served alongside a bowl of spice rub that features toasted Oaxacan grasshoppers. “This is so, so delicious,” says Rainer Judd, Donald’s daughter and the co-president of the Judd Foundation (juddfoundation.org), as she savours a bite of smoked-pineapple sorbet. With her blonde hair and rangy limbs, she resembles Uma Thurman more than a little bit. After decades based in New York, Judd has recently returned to Marfa and bought the adobe home where she and her family originally lived before moving to “The Block”, the collection of buildings where her father displayed his first works. She is currently restoring the house to its former self. “Marfa is the place you go when you’re ready to not move around so much,” says Judd. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s the centre of the Earth.” • Clockwise from top left: the See Mystery Lights mural by Butch Whitfield at Thunderbird; locally made soaps, blankets and rugs at Marfa Brands; the boutique Mano Mercantile Facing page: one of 100 untitled works by Donald Judd in the grounds of the Chinati Foundation CONTACT CENTURION SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 31
