Author: liamhunt

On Saturday, November 23, at the Crowley Theater from 4:00 to 6:00, Center For Big Bend Studies archaeologist Bryon Schroeder will discuss his research into a cave down Pinto Canyon Road known as Spirit Eye.  Since 2017 Schroeder and his crew have been carefully identifying prehistoric artifacts left by the people who lived in the cave as far back as five thousand years ago.  No small amount of sleuthing offers a unique and holistic view into technologies that made prehistoric adaptation to the Chihuahuan Desert possible.  Admission is free.

For eons, humans have gathered in chosen or chance places to wait for the mysterious to happen.  The Marfa Plateau and the area now known as Mitchell Flat is one such place.  This is the perfect place to be a photographer, to practice capturing light. In Alex Marks’ photographs, the West Texas experience of waiting on light is made tangible – moonlight on a passing train, stars migrating across the sky as the earth turns, star light glinting off the blades of a windmill.  Marks’ photographs capture this moment of waiting, of both arrival and passing.  A moment as certain as the rising and setting sun, almost always visible under the wide dome of Marfa’s plains.  The perfect place to wait for the unexpected in an evening’s changing light.  – Katie Smither

The Marfa Lights Viewing Center Archive came into the museum collection on the occasion of the Dark Skies, Mystery Lights exhibition.  Former Marfa high school teacher Felicia Locke preserved all the original documents from a project she began with her students in 1998.  Their idea to create a roadside pavilion for observing the Mystery Lights grew from classroom to Texas Senate funding.  Among the artifacts are the original sketches made by Locke’s architect father and the student’s rally banner (opposite).  The museum is very honored to receive this unique gift.

Reproduced here is an essential recap of Mystery Light sightings compiled by the Friends of the Marfa Public Library.  “The Marfa Lights Viewing Center offers visitors a frame to look.  Some nights you will see something mysterious. Some nights you will not.  You can ask who understands them or explain to others why the wait. But ultimately, for any experience or any answer, you must go yourself and watch for the unknown to show up and surprise you”. — Katie Smither.  

Dark Skies, Mystery Lights was the first in an ongoing series of new exhibition projects that expand the collection through collaborations with artists who have come to Marfa in recent years.  On view October 31, 2018 through May 2019, Dark Skies, Mystery Lights highlighted the museum’s newly acquired archive documenting the development of the Mystery Lights Viewing Station, a project initiated by the eighth-graders in Marfa High School’s Class of ’98. Additionally, our hard-to-match dark skies were represented in the photographs of Alex Marks made at night without artificial light. Visitors also heard individual explanations recorded on site at the Mystery Lights Viewing Station by Ian Lewis of Marfa Public Radio, an audio collage that ranged from the rational to the extraordinary. This exhibition was made possible by a grant from the City of Marfa. Photo by Alex Marks.