Dust. Everyone’s talking about it these days. It’s worse this year, right? Everyone says so, and they’re right. And the dust always seems to find its way in: it sneaks through the crack below the door, and gathers in a finely sifted pile on my windowsill. It’s somehow in my car to the point where I can write “WASH ME” inside of my vehicle.
As we approach 21st-century Dust Bowl conditions in West Texas, the stuff has become an omnipresent force. And also, a so-called “unstable acronym,” according to the purveyors of D.U.S.T. Fest– an art festival that took place last weekend in Lobo, Texas, amidst some perilously strong dust storms.
The event’s website offers various acronyms, which fall from the top of the screen in wobbly grey text (like settling dust):
Distant Unfamiliar Sacred Tones
Daring Undertakings Shift Time
Dusty Uncharted Sonic Topographies
Dawn Unfolds Slowly Tonight
Dim Unknown Spectral Terrain
Each one resonates. On Saturday evening, I headed out to D.U.S.T. Fest as the sun set, towards the Dimmest Unknown Spectral Terrain. The festival took place in Lobo Flats – 9 miles away from the bones of the ghost town of Lobo. The town is composed mainly of a gas station facade, a squat, pink building, and the imposing frame of a hollowed out triangular road sign (which looks, to me, like a big Dorito interrupted by a wormhole).
A ghost town begs you to fill in the ragged blanks and imagine what it once was. In the late 1800s, Lobo was a bustling farming town, boasting acres of fertile land supported by a prolific underground aquifer.
That era came to an end by the 1960s, when farmers all but pumped the water dry and abandoned the town. In the early 2000s, the town sold (yes, the entire town) to a group of Germans who spotted a “town for sale” sign while driving by. They used it for an annual art festival, putting on shows in the ghost town buildings, and converting the Lobo pool into a dance club of sorts.
Lobo went up for sale again a couple of years ago and was subsequently bought, but D.U.S.T. Fest aims to keep the Lobo early-aughts spirit alive, continuing the 20 year legacy of partying in the desert. Dance Until Sunset Transcends.
“Here’s to the D.U.S.T. community and to all the friends we haven’t met yet,” reads the blurb on the website.
The festival featured works from artists Kate Ann, Leah Caldwell, Sam Dwyer, Lesley Eblen, Matthew Gray, Wini Hunton-Chan, Dim Zayan, and more.
The festival’s location was marked with an old car parked on the side of the road, spray painted with the word DUST and an arrow pointing towards a path. The general vibe was Burning Man lite (though I say that as someone who has never attended Burning Man).
Walking towards D.U.S.T. Fest, a brightly-lit shed rose in the distance like some kind of West Texas bandshell. Inside was a man playing a guitar positioned flat on his lap (which he played with all of the finesse and more of a person playing a guitar turned the usual way). This is musician and artist Adam Bork, one of the D.U.S.T. Fest organizers.
Away from the bandshell, I clopped over in the dust to a couple of small metal sheds containing “StoneWares” by Marfa artist Kate Ann – small scenes of exploding casinos, Bass Pro Shops pyramids rising in a rearview mirror, an image of a suspicious cat, which the artist transposed onto clay slabs. The artist uses printmaking methods on wet clay, building up images derived from YouTube, her personal archive, and manipulated symbolist paintings.
“Basically it’s a lot of different processes surrendered to chance and fire over and over again,” Kate wrote me in a message. The resulting works look like anachronistic hieroglyphs, modern destruction cast on bricks of dust. In the dark, I had to use my flashlight to see them, light flicking off of a casino-mid collapse, gleaming with glaze.
In the adjacent shed was a projector on an old-fashioned school desk, playing a powerpoint by Fort Davis artist Leah Caldwell called “New Life Las Vegas” a kinetic, colorful, and totally unhinged journey through cosmetic surgery in Vegas, where a glowing orb acquires extra limbs (and seemingly, a lot of power and joy) at the hands of a stock photo doctor. Caldwell’s project leans into the uncanny, presenting us with images of empty hotel hallways, tract homes, and skeletal figures dancing in the dark.
Adjacent to the sheds was a home filled with television sets of all shapes and sizes in precarious stacks – Bork’s signature brand of odd tech artifacts, which evoke heavy nostalgia and a vague sense of loss for a more imaginative time, when the technological future didn’t feel so terrifying. In the next room sat a doll, surrounded by beads and watching a staticky television, a Poltergeist-y installation of an ongoing project by artist Wini Hunton-Chan (who is also the founder of D.U.S.T. Fest). The whole house was a porous time warp– the wind slamming open the door and whistling through the windows. It felt like we could lift off at any moment.
Much of the other outdoor artwork disappeared into the dark– the light too Dim, the Spectral Terrain too Unknown.
Being at D.U.S.T. Fest, I felt the kind of surreality that I felt when I first moved to Marfa – like I was stumbling upon some kind of rift in the universe. I can’t believe this is here. And also, am I dreaming? Sound emanated from the desert as dust devils whipped around us, spinning grit into my eyes.
When I finally made my way back to Marfa, the dust followed– a hazy brown film blocking out the road, and any sense of where and when we all were. I didn’t know how much time I’d spent out in Lobo Flats, but then again, of course I didn’t. Daring Undertakings Shift Time.
All photos by Leah Caldwell.
Endnotes
- THANK YOU to all the Marfa Public Radio listeners who powered our Spring Membership Drive. We’re so grateful to the 250+ donors from near and far (Midland, Odessa, Marfa, Houston, NYC, and beyond!) for your messages of gratitude, your donations, and for trusting us to bring you independent journalism and quality programs. A heartfelt thank you to our incredible partners: Flying Island, Alta Marfa, Marfa Brand Soap, Marfa Yacht Club, Caddis Eyewear, Vacation Sunscreen, Bitter Sugar, Para Llevar, Margaret's, BORDO, Coyote Coffee, Larry's, and Rambler! It's not too late to support Marfa Public Radio. If you weren't able to donate during our Spring Membership Drive, consider becoming a sustaining member now. Your donations power this newsletter, and all the work we do here.
- In this week's Nature Notes, dark night skies are a precious natural resource – a source of awe, and, for astronomers, a prerequisite for probing the mysteries of the cosmos. Around the world, advocates are fighting to preserve dark skies, as a vital asset for humankind. But there’s also new research showing the importance of dark skies for nonhuman creatures. And our region is a hub for that research.
- The Caló word of the week is tapado. In modern Spanish, it means covered or clogged, as in a lid or drain pipe. But in Caló, tapado means somebody can’t connect the dots or see what may seem obvious to others. It’s not that a tapado lacks an IQ point or two. It’s that they are blind to particular insight, perhaps locked on the wrong paradigm or simply too wishful for the opposite result. In this sense, a die-hard fan of a team that always loses is a tapado. Someone who believes in a candidate or romantic interest and overlooks obvious flaws is a tapado.
- State and local officials confirmed a measles case in Brewster County last Thursday, the first to appear in the Big Bend region since a measles outbreak began earlier this year in West Texas near the New Mexico border. The Texas Department of State Health Services said Thursday afternoon the case was directly linked to the ongoing West Texas outbreak, which has grown to more than 700 cases since it began in Gaines County late January. Travis Bubenik has more on this developing story.
- Sul Ross State University is asking the public to help improve the Hancock Hill hiking and biking trails with a Trail Work Day on Saturday, June 7 from 8am to 11am. Volunteers will help build and maintain trails, pick up trash, and trim trail vegetation. All tools and supplies will be provided. For more information and to register online, click HERE.
Maintenant invites the public to the opening reception of Guadalajara-based artist Karian Amaya's new exhibition, RUINAS DEL PAISAJE on Thursday, June 5th from 7-9pm. The exhibition of marble, glass and copper sculptures will be on display until September at the Maintenant Art & Fighting Laboratory located at 1825 Rabbits Road in Marfa. Click HERE for more info.
