How the Texan art hub of Marfa taught a creative entrepreneur that something could be made out of nothing
- The town of Marfa, in the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas, has been a cultural hub since minimalist artist Donald Judd moved there from New York in the early 1970s
- Kate Jones, the Hong Kong-based founder of creative agency At Liberty, explains how it changed her way of thinking and opened her mind
A place of pilgrimage for art lovers and a living artwork in itself, the town of Marfa, in the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas, has been a cultural hub since minimalist artist Donald Judd moved there from New York in the early 1970s. Today it is home to numerous public artworks, galleries and artists.
Kate Jones, the New Zealand-born, Hong Kong-based founder of creative agency At Liberty and eco-friendly online gift retailer Get.Give, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.
I heard about Marfa when I was about 20 but didn’t get to go there till I was 36. My friend’s parents were talking about it at the dinner table. They were documentary makers, and they’d recently been.
New Zealand is such a remote place, and especially as a teenager and in your early 20s, you can feel stuck. I remember what struck me was: here’s this other really remote place in the middle of nowhere where everyone is going – like the fact that my friend’s parents had made a point to travel there from New Zealand.
I started reading about it, trying to find out as much as possible. There wasn’t so much on the internet then. I was studying graphic design, and I went to the library, but there wasn’t much there, either.
As time went on, I came to really love Donald Judd and embrace his way of living: in open space, always having everything on show rather than tucked away. He was just himself.
