Postcard from... Marfa, Texas

If seeing some two dozen existentialist questions, ranging from “Is one idea big enough?” to “Can complexity be simple?” written ornately in yard-high letters across an outside wall seems wacky enough, in the remote west Texas town of Marfa, lots more surprises lie in store.

Located in the Chihuahuan desert, Marfa boasts many elements of a typical US cattle town, with a gracefully constructed 19th- century courthouse building at the centre and a single-track railroad down which endless freight trains roll.

However the influence of the late 20th-century artist Donald Judd, whose nearby foundation contains a host of giant cement and aluminium works, is equally inescapable. Judd died two decades ago, but his artistic spirit imbued the town to the point where empty buildings inside Marfa are crammed with modern art galleries and any backyard can become an artistic installation.

Businesses reflecting the town’s somewhat relentless artistic feel have sprung up, too, like the hotel offering accommodation in 18 acres of trailers, tee-pees and yurts, or the outdoor food business in a 1974 delivery truck. (To find it, you can ask for directions to the “museum of electronic wonders and late night grilled cheese”, which is just next door.)