College grads settle into small town life in Marfa

After almost four days of flying, driving and running around the tiny west Texas town of Marfa, I am back with nearly three hours of footage and a collection of photos to show and tell.

I don't think I could have held anything else with wires or straps.

I anticipated gathering a lot of multimedia for this story, and honestly, I don’t know if I could have collected any more than I did. I carried my video camera, audio equipment, digital SLR and extra lens to almost every single location. My shoulders and hands were definitely sore by the end of the trip.

On Thursday after driving through a thunderstorm in the desert, I arrived in Marfa to start getting to know the town of 2,000. I found my way into the Chinati Foundation, a museum, home to town pioneer Donald Judd’s minimalist art installations, where the interns and their friends were having their own art showing. I then met blogger Amanda Mayo, 22, at one of the town’s few bars, Padre’s, to bone up on some local info. Friday I ran around town from 9 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. asking young twentysomethings (and thereabouts) for interviews and attending various events like an art opening and a live band performance. Then Saturday morning I hunted down someone to drive a car while I filmed the town’s scenery out of the window. At one point I saw something that looked like a weird deer, but it was antelope on the range (just like the song!).

As I carried my video camera around town, it was hard not to attract attention, even when I tried my best to stay out of the way. I was on the side of the room filming the band, David Garza, at Padre’s on Friday night when suddenly the lead singer shouted out something to the effect of, “Hey you! Girl with the camera! Just because you’re holding that thing doesn’t mean you’re excused from dancing!” Then a girl’s hand came out of nowhere and pulled me on the dance floor and somehow I managed to film people while twirling around in circles. Not sure yet how the footage turned out…

One of the biggest adjustments for me coming to Marfa from Chicago was seeing the same people over and over again at every social event. I would see the same two German boys at an art event, the bar, then at lunch the next day. I normally would think of such frequent encounters as unusual, but that’s just part of living in such a small place.

This week I will start editing my video footage and aim to create a multimedia presentation about the role Marfa has had shaping these young people’s lives and how, in many ways, it exemplifies the type of place people go after college to explore new surroundings and perhaps “find themselves.”