Camp Design Build Adventure’s Winter Furniture Workshop was Dec 15-22 in Marfa, Texas. Hosted by our friends at El Cosmico, this workshop’s exercise was called “Cowboy Junkyard Chairs” and I was blown away by the amazing work of our participants – not to mention the support we got from our partners (Austin Farmhouse Delivery and West Texas Food Bank) and our friends in Marfa (Nick Terry, Peter Stanley, Sam Schonzeit, Molly Walker, Ross Cashiola, more).

The concept was simple: Enjoy Marfa, grab some materials from Cowboy Junk Yard, design and develop a chair concept using those materials and then design build design build design build for a few days, culminating with a gumbo party and silent auction in which the chair fabricator makes the opening bid – for essentially what they would be willing to pay the West Texas Food bank in exchange for their week of hard work.

We toured Marfa studios, shops, saw the Autobody exhibit at Ballroom, and got a special tour of Chinati focused on Judd’s furniture. We searched for arrowheads on a big Texas ranch and looked closely at corral construction and barbed wire fences too. And believe it or not, Dan Dyer cooked eggs and bacon every single day. (We used the bacon grease as a cutting oil.)

The participants – a musician, a law school grad, a photographer, and a future architecture grad student had never really cut, ground, or welded steel… but after a few days, they each had developed their own ‘design build confidence’ and could not be stopped.

I was really impressed with the designs and constructions – each a very different and exciting project and on the final night we had an Austin Farmhouse gumbo, Tito’s vodka campfire happy hour and sold all four of the projects to benefit the West Texas Food Bank.

Thank you Dan, Mahshad, Alex, and Katrina for your energy and hard work.
Thank you Austin Farmhouse Delivery, West Texas Food Bank, and El Cosmico for helping us explore the interesting model of service, fun, design, build, and Adventure…