A new community garden is growing at the Chinati Foundation out in Marfa, full of organic vegetables, flowers, and natural dye plants. Chinati staff, community volunteers, and area students involved in the museum’s education programs grew and shared newly harvested radishes, herbs and arugula at a garden social in June. Future programs are sprouting: a Guerilla Gardening Workshop on July 8 and a Garden Social Hour on July 18 invite Marfa residents to participate.
Against a background of dusty plains, austere minimalism, and a tradition of isolationism, the foundation’s new green thumb and community orientation look like a thaw, one that the foundation fits into the box of Judd’s vision with only a little squashing: “The garden, like other programs at Chinati, is designed to support the vision and culture that artist Donald Judd spirited here in Marfa. Tied specifically to the museum’s tradition of hosting gatherings with shared meals around communal tables, an emphasis on craft, materials, and artisanal production methods, and a deep concern for the land, its resources, and issues of sustainability, the garden allows us to link art and nature in a tangible way, an idea at the core of the museum’s philosophy.”
