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Evolution of A Chair
September 29th, 2025
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It was fifteen years ago that Jamey Garza and Constance Holt-Garza introduced their iconic Round Saddle Leather Chair to the public, a design they had been thinking about since their move to Marfa, Texas from CA in 2003. To celebrate the fifteen year anniversary of The Garza Round Chair we dug into the evolution of how it came to be.
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Inspired by the Acapulco chair, after the 1950’s jet-set destination, with a bucket shaped seat woven in colorful nylon cord, the Mexican model uses techniques from indigenous Mayan hammock weavers. By re-imagining the original handwoven seat with vegetable-tanned saddle leather and adding an inverted wishbone-shaped base, the Garza’s transformed a breezy bohemian beach lounger into a rugged and refined rendering for The High Plains Desert. The Garza Round Chair merges the ethos of West Texas cattle ranching culture with the cerebral aesthetic of minimalism, embodying the contrasting worlds that inhabit the town of Marfa.
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The Garza’s came to Texas from CA to work on a redesign of The Thunderbird back in the early 2000’s. Constance had a previous life in fashion and Jamey in fabrication and design. Their partnership is as much about love and romance as it is about innovation, self-determination and vision. Plans to move back to Jamey’s hometown of Austin shifted when the Garza’s found the arid expanses of West Texas to be a productive home base to work out creative ideas.
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The Garza’s collaborate on all their furniture pieces through a repetitive process of sketching, building and critiquing until both agree on the final design. Prototypes are built in Marfa while production fabrication is done with help from local craftspeople at their studio in El Paso. Final finish work and assembly on each piece is completed by Jamey before shipping.
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In 2010 after years of testing, tweaking and refitting till the leather sat just right the Garza’s launched The Round Chair with powder coated steel legs in their signature color palette. With this first original design, The Round Chair became the starting point for Constance and Jamey’s saddle leather collection ultimately released in 2012 at the Heath Ceramics ‘Marfa Amigos’ exhibition in LA, which included fellow Marfa artists whom Jamey & Constance invited to take part.
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Fifteen years later Jamey and Constance continue to fabricate and produce their furniture in West Texas. We wanted to celebrate this fifteen year milestone to acknowledge the journey. We also wanted to thank the community of Marfa, Garza’s first customers and supporters as well as those who just found us. Garza Marfa may be fifteen years out but we're just getting started...
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For inquiries feel free to reach out, we personally answer all customer emails. Thanks for being here, stay tuned for more updates!
Cheers, THE GARZA MARFA TEAM
~~~
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IN THE STUDIO WITH
September 15, 2025
Featuring artists & designers from our shop.
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Fluorescent flowers, harlequin patterns and still lives, Meghan Gerety’s relief paintings are an exploration of the dialogue between the natural world and abstraction. Inspired by Dutch vanitas and memento mori paintings, Gerety uses skulls,
flowers and symbolic objects to confront the passage of time. Employing the processes of drawing, carving, painting and print making, her carved-plywood works simultaneously embody qualities of painting and the three-dimensionality of sculpture. Meghan has evolved her woodblock printing process over years of studio practice referencing nature and the history of art to create a formal language all her own.
A long time resident of Marfa, now based in Brooklyn, this week we visit with Meghan Gerety in her Brooklyn studio and chat about the evolution of her artistic process. Her exhibition, Weather Poems recently opened at Gensco and a new series of works entitled Street Weeds is now on view at Garza Marfa.
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GARZA: What are the primary mediums you use in your practice?
MG: My current medium is acrylic on carved plywood.
GARZA: What are the themes or subjects you're working with when you're thinking about a work or a series?
MG: I read a lot about nature, poetry, art, biographies, listen to music, yoga, philosophy, spirituality, so all of that, everything that interests me in my life and the pursuit of truth in my life goes into my art, it is me.
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GARZA: Why paint and wood as your chosen mediums?
MG: My work over the years has progressed to this current point. After making drawings for 15 years I began making large wood blocks on plywood, which I would use to make prints. But I considered the blocks the finished pieces as much as the prints themselves. The work then evolved into painting on carved wood and the printing part was not always present in the work. That has evolved to where I am now which is carved and cut plywood, painted.
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GARZA: What are you currently excited about working on right now in the studio?
MG: I just created a new body of work entitled ‘Weather Poems’ which I'm showing at Gensco in Marfa, TX. The word "raga" comes from a Sanskrit word meaning "color". The resulting music is intended to evoke specific emotions or "color the mind" of the listener. This work is the freest work I have ever made and feels like the most direct line from my creative unconscious to physical form while being aware of the weight of art history and accumulated knowledge. I'm creating archetypes of landscape, nature and art history; abstracted memento mori, landscape as memento mori, the ephemeral fused with the concrete to get to the essence of my truth through art.
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GARZA: What are you doing when you are not making art ?
MG: When I'm working in the studio I feel most aligned with myself. When I’m not making art I’m living my best life! Running, swimming, raising my son, loving, cooking, eating, playing, laughing!
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FAMILY HEIRLOOMS
August 25th, 2025
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