Ballroom Marfa Art Fund

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Trey Laird Shares His Love Affair with Marfa

17 Nov 2014

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Photo by David X Prutting/BFAnyc.com

To mark the occasion of Ballroom Marfa’s 2014 NYC Benefit Gala, BlackBook talked with friend of the Ballroom Trey Laird of Laird+Partners. In this interview he shares the beginnings of his involvement in the town’s art infrastructure, and finding inspiration for his own creative endeavors.

From BlackBook:

How are things going for the Ballroom?

It’s amazing. Obviously the famous thing they supported was Prada Marfa–to have something like that in the middle of nowhere get such global attention, it’s really extraordinary. Not only for those artists, just what it says about independent art and being able to realize projects and have them accept people in different ways. I think there are so many thousands and thousands of people who drive by that and have no knowledge of art and don’t know anything about Ballroom or the artists or anything about it–but think about it and interact with art in maybe a way that they’re not even realizing. I think there’s something really amazing about that. Ballroom is one of those places that I think is such a free-spirit in the art world. There aren’t that many of those. There are so many institutions that are big and powerful and have huge budgets and powerful boards–but to have some small, independent things that are really open-minded and experimental, and have freedom, and allow artists to kind of push the limits of what they want to express: that’s the beauty of what Fairfax and Virginia have created. Most artists are super inspired to do something like that in Marfa. It’s just this magic place that. I’ve never met an artist that either hasn’t loved if they’ve been or isn’t dying to go if they haven’t. That’s inspiring; it’s a very inspiring place.