Deep Set in Colorado Buff: Tumble In Desert Soul

Some trips are just a drive. This one was an adventure.

We packed up the truck, the kid, and the camping gear…hitched the trailer, and headed south carrying a Colorado Buff Flag Stone, Deep Set. Born from the Northern Colorado Mountains and built with the inspiration and creative spirit of the borderlands of West Texas, Marfa and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two chairs and a table, each one hunted and hand sculpted by Garry and Jennifer Carmack. Different lines, complementary souls. Where angles and asymmetrical geometry becomes the conversation. Where one piece answers the gesture of another. The warm buff goldens with spatterings of black contrast, and the peachy undertones of the stone, pull it all into one quiet, coherent story.

On the road, I found myself thinking of Jill and her girls — the stories artists' kids carry with them, growing up inside creativity and road trips. Building sets and letting folks sit and experience these Deep Set Chairs. That energy traveled with us. Max was ready with pool dreams in his eyes, he was willing to be along for the ride.

West Texas. The Borderlands. Big Sky.

The Chihuahuan Desert doesn't ease you in. It opens, wide as if birthed from the Guadalupe Mountain range and the Davis Mountains. The sky becomes the whole world. The sun out here isn't gentle. It's honest. It bleaches, and cracks and warms and cools. Every shadow an oasis for the eye…and the temperature. By day, the land stretches in ochre and sage, in dust and century plants and silence so full it hums. Cars on the two lane highway in, wiz by every couple minutes with less frequency but its own steady rhythm. By night, the stars don't just appear, they arrive, layers of lights that twinkle so fluidly, they look like they are falling.

And then there are the Marfa Lights. Mysterious, unexplained, and on a clear night are clearly a cosmic phenomenom. They hover on the horizon. They shift laterally and shoot up and drop down. They change color, reds, greens and golds. The first recorded sighting was in 1883. When a cowhand first saw the flickering lights while cattle driving through Paisano Pass and wondered if it was the campfire of the Apache.  Throughout the 20th century they have tried to investigate the source of the lights, still no explanation of their existence.  But there they are.

We were there at the spring equinox, the precise hinge between seasons, when the light tilts and we are even between light and dark, just so potent and magical. A full experience sleeping in a tent down in the earth with all those goat head pricklers in our feet, keeping us paying attention. The desert will get ya.

Marfa. The Art. The Cool.

Homage to the 1956 epic film Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean filmed in Marfa.

Marfa shouldn't exist, and that's exactly why it does. A small West Texas town where Minimalist art landed decades ago and never left. The landscape itself is the canvas, and the artists who stayed understood something important: that open space is not empty. It is structure. It is form. It is the negative space that makes sculpture possible.

The desert light here is mercurial. Morning is blue-silver and tentative. Noon is bold and unsparing. And at sunset,  this is where it gets good! The whole palette shifts to rose gold, peach, amber. We watched it happen on the flagstone of our chairs. The Colorado Buff came alive in that light, glowing warm and ancient, like the stone remembered something the desert had told it long ago.

The people of Marfa are their own art form, quietly magnetic, deeply creative, effortlessly cool. And here is what you should know about Marfa: something is definitely happening. You can feel it. You catch it in a glance, in a doorway, in the music coming from somewhere you can't quite locate. There's a party, a beautiful, strange, visionary party…and you are not on the list. We are not on the list.

But we want in.

Our Colorado Buff Deep Set got some attention out there. Oohs and ahhs. More than a few "we have never seen anything like this before." , “they are so comfortable!” We spoke to interior designer, gallery owners and set our sights for the New El Cosmico being build 2026. Marfa, you egg us on. We felt it. The way this place sees and rewards creative ingenuity, and bold strokes in art. We want to play!

We left inspired! Ideas oozing and glimmers of a new Marfa-inspired design. Sexy single back, no arms, petined steel ….Stay tuned!

Into Santa Fe. A Dust Storm and a Dream.

We floated like a feather carrying a trailer of rocks into the warm, welcoming arms of New Mexico. We rolled into Santa Fe on Sunday evening just in time to watch the sky put on a show after a dust storm. The light does something extraordinary, it catches all that suspended earth and turns the whole horizon into fire. Dramatic, vibrant colors locks your eyes.

We slept so good that night. Especially after two days of tent camping in the desert at the Tumble In. We had that particular kind of deep, dusty, bone-tired sleep that only the road can give you.

Monday morning arrived gentle and golden, with a soft spring 60* breeze and a sunrise that lit the day in the crisp light of morning. We strapped in our Colorado Buff Deep Set down in the trailer and drove into town.

Canyon Road. The Wiford Gallery. Gentle Winds of Santa Fe Possibilities.

Canyon Road in Santa Fe is one of those rare streets that actually lives up to its legend. It is a half-mile stretch of art galleries, sculpture gardens, and adobe walls that has been at the heart of Southwestern art for generations. It is a place where serious collectors come, where serious artists are represented, and where the work earns its place in the light.

Wiford Gallery, established in 2002, is a destination for fine art on Canyon Road, representing artists of the highest caliber. The gallery is adjoined by a large outdoor sculpture garden that extends into the landscape itself.Timothy Wiford and his team work with an ethos of bringing genuine beauty into the world, one collector at a time.

And on a bright Monday morning in late March, we pulled up with our chairs… and they said yes.

We are thrilled and deeply honored to be represented by the Wiford Gallery and the Santa Fe creative community. The Southwest has been the heartbeat behind this work from the beginning, and to be welcomed into that world, to be seen and recognized here, means everything. We cannot wait to create, to collaborate, and to grow as part of this extraordinary place.

Colorado Buff Deep Set at The Wiford Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Headed Home. Full of Everything.

We pointed north toward Fort Collins smiling ear to ear, our heads full of color and desert light and new ideas — ideas for Marfa, ideas for Santa Fe, ideas that haven't quite taken shape yet but are already asking to be made.

The workshop is waiting. The stone is waiting. We are just getting started.

Stay tuned.