"I really love this place out here, and I love the way it looks. I like the way it smells. I like to go outside at night and just look at the sky and feel the wind, and I think it's a really precious place, and I think it's a precious place because of what has come before and because of what's here now."
-- Dallas Baxter
Now available: the full transcript of Marfa Mondays Podcast #12 "This Precious Place: An Interview with Dallas Baxter, Founding Editor of Cenizo Journal"
> Listen to the podcast
> Read the transcript
> All Marfa Mondays podcasts (16 of a projected 24)
Other transcripts now available include:
>Tremendous Forms: Paul V. Chaplo on Funding Composition in the Landscape
>Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands
>Looking at Mexico in New Ways: An Interview with Historian John Tutino
More transcripts to be posted soon.
Podcasts in-progress include interviews with Enrique Madrid and Lonn Taylor.
>Your COMMENTS are always welcome.
Showing posts with label Cenizo Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cenizo Journal. Show all posts
A Visit to Swan House: Presidio Texas' Unique Adobe Teaching House Inspired by the Legacy of Hassan Fathy
I first spied it from a Jeep on Casa Piedra Road: a huddle of oddly shaped brown buildings baking in the sun. I'd arrived at its modest gate after a mile and a bit of crunching over gravel up from the Rio Grande near Presidio on the U.S.-Mexico border. What interested me then—I was just starting my book on far West Texas, focusing on the probable route of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the would-be conquistador of Florida who got lost—was the landscape. Such raw, open vistas were easy to imagine seeing through that ill-starred Spaniard's eyes. From a cloudless dome, the February sun beat down on the rocks and tangles of mesquite and clumps of prickly pear cactus, and ocotillo that stretched on for what must have been, for anyone on foot, a merciless number of miles. To the northwest loomed the bulk of the Chinatis, to the east, the jagged and lavender Bofecillos, and into Mexico, the Sierra Grande.
..."That's Simone Swan's house."
...My guide, Charlie Angell, brought down the window to show me the object, until then mysterious to me, of our detour. He'd been showing me the sights along the Rio Grande- the Hoodoos, Closed Canyon, and the narrow shallows in the river at Lajitas where Cabeza de Vaca, then nearly eight years into his odyssey, may have waded across. Even today, in many places along the river, you could walk right up to its bank, pitch a stone, and it would thunk onto someone's alfalfa field in Mexico. Coming up Casa Piedra Road, we'd seen no one-just a flash of a jackrabbit. Already Charlie was making the U-turn back to Presidio.
..."It's Egyptian," he added.
...This, in a land of décor inspired by what I had come to think of as Ye Olde Cowboys & Indians, struck me like thunder. Well, was it like the inside of a Disneyland ride? Did she worship Isis? Once home, I Googled.
...Simone Swan, it turned out, is an adobe visionary with a distinguished career in the arts, including many years with Houston's Menil Foundation; her house, not Egyptian, exactly, nor a whim, but a work-in-progress used by her Adobe Alliance, a nonprofit for teaching earthen design and construction. And the Egyptian influence? Hassan Fathy.
...Not Fathy as in "Cathy," as an Egyptian acquaintance was quick to correct me, but Foh'tee.
...Another Google search bought up his book, published by the University of Chicago Press in translation from the French, Construir avec le peuple, as Architecture for the Poor. When I got my hands on a copy, I learned that Fathy was Egypt's greatest 20th century architect, renowned for rescuing ancient architectural features and techniques for building with mud brick, a material he passionately advocated for as abundant, and, when used appropriately, comfortable, ecological, sanitary, and beautiful.
...
...In his photo, he might have passed for an elderly Mexican lawyer with his halo of gray hair, mustache, red turtleneck and poncho-like burnouse. He squinted from behind his glasses in an expression at once pained and kind—entirely understable once I learned of his battles with the Egyptian bureaucracy, then enamored of Soviet-style steel and concrete housing, and his nonetheless unyielding commitment to building housing for and with the fellaheen, the peasants who lived in abject poverty.
...Born in 1900 into a wealthy family in Alexandria, Fathy did not set foot on one of his own family's many farms until he was in his twenties, and when he did, the wretchedness of its workers' houses shocked him. His solution, in part, was to build with better design and mud brick. Mud could be dug up easily, bricks could formed of the mud, animal dung, and a bit of straw, and then left to bake in the sun. The challenge was the cost of timber for roofing and, for brick vaults, timber for propping them up during construction. Egypt imported its timber from Europe. Then World War II broke out.
...Ancient Egyptians built vaults, many of which had survived for hundreds, even thousands of years, without using wood, but how? Every one of Fathy's attempts to construct a roof without wood collapsed in a heap of bricks and dust. But then his brother, who was working on the Aswan dam, mentioned that the Nubians, the dark-skinned people of Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan, roofed their houses and mosques without using wood.
In an a matter of two visits to Aswan, Hassan Fathy found the masons, barefoot and in turbans, who showed him their technique of roofing by means of parabola-shaped layers of adobe bricks laid at an angle against a back wall. The bricks had extra straw for lightness, and a groove, made by the scrape of a finger before they'd dried, on one side, so as to give the mortared brick "grab." Mortar was a mix of sand, clay, and water. Using no tools other than an adze, and a plank for scaffolding, two men threw up a fine mud-brick roof over a 10' x 13' room in one and a half days.
...Marveled Fathy, "It was so unbelievably simple."
...When Simone Swan was living in New York, a house with two courtyards came to her in a dream. And it seemed like a dream to me that, less than a year after I'd first glimpsed Swan House from the road, I was sitting with its owner in the Nubian vault that was the living room, the shell high above us aglow with the orange light of morning. A graceful eighty-something with a crown of snow-white hair, Simone Swan was telling me how, at mid-life in the 1970s, she had gone to Paris for the Menil Foundation's exihibition of the surrealist Max Ernst's paintings, and at a dinner party, met a filmmaker who had just wrapped a documentary on the world's greatest architect.
...Simone laughed. "I said, Hassan Who?" . . . . CONTINUE READING
..."That's Simone Swan's house."
...My guide, Charlie Angell, brought down the window to show me the object, until then mysterious to me, of our detour. He'd been showing me the sights along the Rio Grande- the Hoodoos, Closed Canyon, and the narrow shallows in the river at Lajitas where Cabeza de Vaca, then nearly eight years into his odyssey, may have waded across. Even today, in many places along the river, you could walk right up to its bank, pitch a stone, and it would thunk onto someone's alfalfa field in Mexico. Coming up Casa Piedra Road, we'd seen no one-just a flash of a jackrabbit. Already Charlie was making the U-turn back to Presidio.
..."It's Egyptian," he added.
...This, in a land of décor inspired by what I had come to think of as Ye Olde Cowboys & Indians, struck me like thunder. Well, was it like the inside of a Disneyland ride? Did she worship Isis? Once home, I Googled.
...Simone Swan, it turned out, is an adobe visionary with a distinguished career in the arts, including many years with Houston's Menil Foundation; her house, not Egyptian, exactly, nor a whim, but a work-in-progress used by her Adobe Alliance, a nonprofit for teaching earthen design and construction. And the Egyptian influence? Hassan Fathy.
...Not Fathy as in "Cathy," as an Egyptian acquaintance was quick to correct me, but Foh'tee.
...Another Google search bought up his book, published by the University of Chicago Press in translation from the French, Construir avec le peuple, as Architecture for the Poor. When I got my hands on a copy, I learned that Fathy was Egypt's greatest 20th century architect, renowned for rescuing ancient architectural features and techniques for building with mud brick, a material he passionately advocated for as abundant, and, when used appropriately, comfortable, ecological, sanitary, and beautiful.
...
...In his photo, he might have passed for an elderly Mexican lawyer with his halo of gray hair, mustache, red turtleneck and poncho-like burnouse. He squinted from behind his glasses in an expression at once pained and kind—entirely understable once I learned of his battles with the Egyptian bureaucracy, then enamored of Soviet-style steel and concrete housing, and his nonetheless unyielding commitment to building housing for and with the fellaheen, the peasants who lived in abject poverty.
...Born in 1900 into a wealthy family in Alexandria, Fathy did not set foot on one of his own family's many farms until he was in his twenties, and when he did, the wretchedness of its workers' houses shocked him. His solution, in part, was to build with better design and mud brick. Mud could be dug up easily, bricks could formed of the mud, animal dung, and a bit of straw, and then left to bake in the sun. The challenge was the cost of timber for roofing and, for brick vaults, timber for propping them up during construction. Egypt imported its timber from Europe. Then World War II broke out.
...Ancient Egyptians built vaults, many of which had survived for hundreds, even thousands of years, without using wood, but how? Every one of Fathy's attempts to construct a roof without wood collapsed in a heap of bricks and dust. But then his brother, who was working on the Aswan dam, mentioned that the Nubians, the dark-skinned people of Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan, roofed their houses and mosques without using wood.
In an a matter of two visits to Aswan, Hassan Fathy found the masons, barefoot and in turbans, who showed him their technique of roofing by means of parabola-shaped layers of adobe bricks laid at an angle against a back wall. The bricks had extra straw for lightness, and a groove, made by the scrape of a finger before they'd dried, on one side, so as to give the mortared brick "grab." Mortar was a mix of sand, clay, and water. Using no tools other than an adze, and a plank for scaffolding, two men threw up a fine mud-brick roof over a 10' x 13' room in one and a half days.
...Marveled Fathy, "It was so unbelievably simple."
...When Simone Swan was living in New York, a house with two courtyards came to her in a dream. And it seemed like a dream to me that, less than a year after I'd first glimpsed Swan House from the road, I was sitting with its owner in the Nubian vault that was the living room, the shell high above us aglow with the orange light of morning. A graceful eighty-something with a crown of snow-white hair, Simone Swan was telling me how, at mid-life in the 1970s, she had gone to Paris for the Menil Foundation's exihibition of the surrealist Max Ernst's paintings, and at a dinner party, met a filmmaker who had just wrapped a documentary on the world's greatest architect.
...Simone laughed. "I said, Hassan Who?" . . . . CONTINUE READING
Marfa Mondays Returns with an Interview with Dallas Baxter, "This Precious Place"
A metaphorical asteroid took out the past few months, but (whew) the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project resumes today with podcast #12, an interview with Cenizo Journal's founding editor, Dallas Baxter.
Baxter had just turned over Cenizo Journal to its new owner when I interviewed her last February 2013 in Alpine (about an half hour's drive from Marfa). She had arrived from New York just around the time of 9/11, and as editor of a journal covering the arts and history of the Big Bend / Trans-Pecos region of far West Texas, Baxter has an usually rich experience and perspective. If you wonder how a print publication can make it in this crazy digital age, and what it's like to live in such a remotely beautiful place, listen in.
COMMENTS? Always welcome.
There will be 24 podcasts, and the project now extends through 2015.
Listen in to all the podcasts anytime at www.cmmayo.com/marfa
Check out the dedicated Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project Blog
Recent Marfa Mondays Podcasts include
+Cowboy Songs by Cowboys
+Mary Baxter, Painting the Landscape (no, she's not related to Dallas Baxter but they are friends)
+A Visit to Swan House
+Moonlight Gemstones
+A Spell in Chinati Hotsprings
... and more. Listen in any time, free, to all of them here.
Marfa Mondays #10: A Visit to Swan House
Listen in to the podcast here of my lecture for PEN San Miguel on January 29, 2013 in San Miguel de Allende's Teatro Angela Peralta, about literary travel writing in the digital age and-- starting at about 15:00-- "A Visit to Swan House," my article in the current issue of Cenizo Journal, about adobe visionary Simone Swan's mysteriously beautiful teaching house near Presidio, on the US-Mexico border in Far West Texas.
"A Visit to Swan House" is #10 in the 24 podcast series.
#9 Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend
#8 A Spell at Chinati Hotsprings
#7 The Marfa Lights: We Have Seen the Lights
#6 Marfa's Moonlight Gemstones
#5 Cynthia McAlister, the Buzz on the Bees
#4 Avram Dumitrescu, An Artist in Alpine
#3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony
#2 Charles Angell in the Big Bend
#1 Introduction and welcome
Want to be notified when the next podcast is available? Sign up for my free newsletter which goes out about 3 - 5 times a year (opt in or out or back in automatically anytime).
***UPDATE Jan 2014: "A Visit to Swan House" is now available on-line.
"A Visit to Swan House" is #10 in the 24 podcast series.
#9 Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend
#8 A Spell at Chinati Hotsprings
#7 The Marfa Lights: We Have Seen the Lights
#6 Marfa's Moonlight Gemstones
#5 Cynthia McAlister, the Buzz on the Bees
#4 Avram Dumitrescu, An Artist in Alpine
#3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony
#2 Charles Angell in the Big Bend
#1 Introduction and welcome
Want to be notified when the next podcast is available? Sign up for my free newsletter which goes out about 3 - 5 times a year (opt in or out or back in automatically anytime).
***UPDATE Jan 2014: "A Visit to Swan House" is now available on-line.
Marfa Mondays Podcast #5 Cynthia McAlister: The Buzz on the Bees
Cynthia McAlister is an expert on the bees of West Texas, and as those of you who have been following this blog know, I'm crazy about bees, so this interview is one I was especially delighted be able to do. It was recorded in late January when I was traveling in the area for my book (as yet untitled). I've been back since and will be posting more podcasts-- they're scheduled for the 3rd Monday of every month through the end of 2013-- including one on the remote and restful Chinati Hotsprings and an interview with the owner of Marfa's fascinating Moonlight Gemstones. Stay tuned.
Links to surf:
About the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project
Previous "Marfa Mondays" podcasts:
-->Avram Dumitrescu, An Artist in Alpine (April 16, 2012)
-->Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony (March 19, 2012)
-->Charles Angell in the Big Bend (February 20, 2012)
-->Introduction and Welcome (January 16, 2012)
More related surfing:
Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute and Nature Center
Cenizo Journal (download for free and read McAlister's article in the bees in the winter 2012 issue)
Farm Stand Marfa Blog, "The Bee Is Not a Machine" and "The Bee, the Blossom and the Beginning of Civilization"
My Mexico City Melissa Garden (mini-clip video)
(a melissa garden is a garden for bees)
An excellent recent article in the San Diego Reader, "Marfa Moments" by W.S. Di Piero
And another in the El Paso Times by Ramón Rentería, "Old-time Marfa Lives on in Memories"
Many more links to read about Marfa & Environs here.
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